series.

Healthcare technology is fascinating to me. While all the expensive medical equipment in hospitals and clinics  is cool, I’m really interested in the technology that patients can use and technology that makes healthcare more transparent. Perhaps this is because I, personally, hope I never have need of robotic surgery equipment or fast healing bone putty. Or maybe because I’ll never get to operate an MRI machine (nor would I really understand what it was doing anyway).

And of course, there’s been a boom of patient centered technology coming out – especially with the proliferation of smartphones. Techcrunch wrote about some interesting apps. There are lots of ways to find a doctor near you: iTriage and ZocDoc as examples. And of course, don’t forget the good old staple of just googling your symptoms to see what’s wrong (tip: I’m pretty sure this never works out and it will always convince you that you have some sort of cancer or terrible illness).

But my point is that, as a healthy 26-year old, I’m interested in the technology and information that might actually be applicable to me. Instead of something to help me when I’m sick, I want something to help me stay healthy and informed. This must be why I like working with electronic health records. Even though I’m healthy and rarely see the doctor – I still have a medical record (albeit one I’ve never seen or requested) and it should still matter to me.

So I’m going to try doing a small health series – because I read a lot of health related news. And I think a lot of people are in the same boat as me – young, healthy, reactive, and pretty much the opposite of a hypochondriac. We’ll see how this goes.

 

Disclaimer: I am not, in any way, medically trained and anything I saw should be taken with a grain of salt. This is just stuff that’s interesting to me and so I like to share.