In 1928, the discovery of penicillin helped kick off a century of cosmic shifts in medicine and treatment options. But the next “wonder drug” may not be a single treatment but the amalgamation of massive amounts of digital health data that can be used to provide individualized care.
This article explores the technologies that allow for digital health growth and innovation, and how this can be used to help keep us healthy now and into the future.
Wearable Technologies for Remote Patient Monitoring
At-home body monitoring was once largely restricted to heart rate devices used for cardiovascular training. Today, a wide range of remote patient monitoring devices exist that can literally phone home via smartphone integration.
One interesting technology is dedicated mobile cardiac telemetry and event monitoring. A device attached to the skin for heart monitoring relays information to healthcare professionals.
While dedicated cardiac monitoring is used where an underlying risk is known, widely used smartwatches also feature an impressive array of digital health monitoring technologies.
The latest Apple Watch, which one might consider the frontrunner in such technology, features:
• Optical heart rate sensing for irregularities
• An ECG app (see this article for more information on wrist-mounted ECG tech)
• Blood oxygen level detection
• An inertial sensor to detect falls, automatically calling emergency services in some situations
Another monitoring and intervention technology being explored is the “digital tattoo.” Here, flexible electronics are affixed to one’s body via an adhesive. Dedicated cardiac monitoring devices which stick onto one’s chest could be considered a form of this technology, as is the digital pill system noted below. Digital tattoos present a wide range of other possibilities like monitoring via skin biomarkers, and delivering drugs targeted to a certain area on the body, or at certain times.
Ingestible “Pill Tech”
While pills are typically used to administer medicines (e.g., antibiotics) it’s also possible to deliver other “things” inside an ingestible package. One interesting device is the Abilify MyCite pill, which the FDA approved in 2017. This pill can wirelessly relay a signal to a patch attached to a patient’s skin to verify that it’s been ingested. This patch then relays the data to a smartphone via Bluetooth, which can then be used by medical staff.
A more involved electronic pill is an ingestible camera that takes images of your digestive system and transmits them wirelessly. These have been approved for use by the FDA since 2011, and this type of technology has been further explored since the advent of COVID as an at-home diagnostic option.
Finally, while still in development, researchers have been experimenting with robots that can be swallowed, which then unfold to perform useful work. Potential uses of such robots include surgical intervention as well as targeted drug delivery to the proper internal site. While not yet comparable to the movies Innerspace or Fantastic Voyage, given a few decades of development, all bets are off.
RFID Tagging
An interesting technology that has been put into widespread use in hospitals in recent years is RFID tagging. This allows for tracking of medicines, samples, surgical implements, and even people, in a similar method to using a bar code. Since a tag doesn’t have to be physically seen, this technology can be used to scan a patient’s body to ensure surgical sponges aren’t left inside a patient after a procedure—a relatively rare, but serious, occurrence. Look for this tech’s continued implementation in the future.
Digital Health Plus Computing Power: Massive Potential
As we saw with the distributed computing efforts to fight COVID-19, and the rapid development of new drugs during that time, massive computing power can facilitate quick and effective results. It also means that data from remote patient monitoring devices, plus information from office visits and more traditional diagnostics, could be combined as a robust model for each individual—a medical digital twin, to use an emerging idiom. Individual digital health data could then be analyzed, potentially with the help of AI, allowing us to look forward to a healthier future with insights that we could only dream of in years past.
