Modern western societies are swamped with the most advanced communication technology the world has ever seen. They’re also – almost universally – suffering from epidemics of obesity and preventable deaths from related conditions like diabetes. Are the two related? Well possibly. Certainly, we live more sedentary lives than when we were chasing our dinner. However, mobile technology can be a good guy as well as a villain in this story, with plenty of apps offering to keep an eye on your exercise program, monitor your health and help the disabled live more active lives.
Apps to Get You Going
A smartphone these days is an incredibly sophisticated machine with a plethora of features that can be used to drive or improve a fitness program and access to enough information to keep you healthy for life, if you use it correctly.
GPS trackers have turned phones into exercise monitors. Apps like Garmin Fit know where you’ve been, the sort of terrain you’ve been running over and with your age, weight and height will tell you how many calories you’ve run. Nike Training Club, for example, uses our competitive urges to drive us on to work harder and even supplies healthy recipes. Fitocracy introduces outside competition in a social network and Gympact offers that ultimate motivator, cold hard cash to the equation. Apps can help you cycle better, meditate and guide you through a yoga session.
Apps to Keep You Healthy
Exercise programs are one thing, but what of dealing with actual ill health? In December 2013, 30 cyclists pedaled their way from Brussels to Barcelona. Twenty of the riders had Type 1 diabetes. They were kept healthy with the help of range of mobile devices. This is called mHealth and it’s big business and about to get bigger. The European cycle ride was an illustration and a test of networking information from systems produced by different companies. The cyclists were set on their way by GSMA, a 250-plus company organization representing companies in mobile communications technology. The experiment is even being talked of as a clinical trial of the effects of exercise on Type 1 diabetes sufferers. Researchers described the possible impact of such link-ups as “profound”. For those who suffer from a disability technology can be life-changing and smartphones make it available anywhere at any time. Google Glass, with the right software, could be transformative for blind people. Already an app offers “real-time object recognition”. Facial recognition software can help those, like Asperger’s Syndrome sufferers, who struggle to translate emotion; the deaf could enjoy subtitles in real time from those who are speaking to them. One of the great benefits the mHealth industry sees in using mobile devices is that they are with us all of the time. They can monitor long-term health conditions remotely and reduce the need for diagnostic appointments and possibly treatment. As disability often involves financial as well as physical difficulties, anything that can make life easier for disabled people is a great help.
Cautionary Tales
At the same time that the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) is announcing more spectrum space for mobile health use, the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) are warning that the industry may be innovating without the evidence to back. A vast section of the industry is, and will remain, unregulated. Apple’s iTunes App Store stocks more than 43,000 health apps. Most are simply sitting on the digital shelf doing little harm. However, even some that are aimed at doctors are useless, or worse, potentially dangerous. The FDA will soon regulate “non-consumer medical apps that have the potential to harm patients”. That includes apps that work with already regulated medical devices and apps – like heart monitor apps – that turn a mobile device into a regulated device. That leaves an awful lot of unregulated material, aimed at consumers and providing advice that no-one has checked. It’s important that if you are going to use medical apps that you do some research and look for reviews (there are precious few clinical trials or equivalent tests as yet) at least. Privacy is always a concern in the wired world, and you should also be sure that any information you might provide to a monitoring app, for example, is going to remain safe.
All around the World
Perhaps we should be happier that while our mobile devices will help us get up for that jog or allow us to scan groceries for their calorie count, in the developing world mHealth has already proved transformative. Coming from an extremely low healthcare and communications base, the extremely rapid and very widespread adoption of cheap mobile phones is changing people’s lives – in Uganda, one program used SMS messages to achieve a 40% increase in HIV testing.