Lab Soft News: Smartphones Provide a Key Element in Our Personal Health Management Systems

A recent article reinforced in my mind the notion that smartphones serve as a critical device in our evolving personal health management systems (see: Study Enrolls First US Patient to Use a Smartphone for Direct Pacemaker Monitoring). It makes the point that smartphones can monitor implanted cardiac pacemakers instead of the previous "black boxes." Below is an excerpt from it:

In early July, a Cleveland Clinic patient became the first in the U.S. to use their smartphone to directly monitor their implanted cardiac pacemaker. The patient was enrolled in a multicenter international study with the potential to reshape remote monitoring of patients with pacemakers. The 12-month study...is evaluating patient and clinician perceptions of Medtronic’s BlueSync technology, which for the first time allows automatic, wireless remote monitoring of a pacemaker directly using the patient’s smartphone or tablet. When paired with a compatible smartphone app, BlueSync-enabled devices communicate through Bluetooth wireless telemetry to the Medtronic CareLink cellular network to allow clinicians to remotely review alerts of patient events at any time and remotely check their devices periodically.....No pacemaker data are stored in the phone, which serves merely as a vehicle for transmitting data via Wi-Fi or cellular network. Patients still need to visit the clinic about once a year since not everything can be checked remotely and because settings can’t be changed remotely, for security reasons.

It seems to me that our evolving personal health management systems will consist of at least five basic elements:

Smart phones like the iPhone, small mobile computing devices stored on our person, that serve as "command central" in these systems.
A super-app like Apple Health installed on smartphones that manages information, partly through third-party apps. Also available now are organ-specific super-apps like Cardiogram. The Apple Health app also integrates hospital-generated data acquired through EHR patient portals (see: Lineup of EHR Vendors; Senior Use of Patient Portals Notable).
Various kinds of health wearables like Apple Watches, implanted devices like pacemakers, and standalone devices like Omron blood monitoring devices or ECG monitors (see: Six-Lead, Consumer-Facing ECG Device Close to Release to Market) that can communicate with the smart phones with a Bluetooth connection.
Access to the internet via wifi or special dedicated lower-power health networks (se: AT&T Offers the LTE-M, Low-Powered Network for Uploading Wearable Health Data).
Increasingly sophisticated algorithms that are integrated with the various devices and wearables that interpret the health data being gathered. A prime example is the ECG app available on the Apple watch that can diagnose atrial fibrillation in 30 seconds.