In the near future, the doctor could be only a video call and co-pay away

Thanks to our most beloved pocket-sized computers, inconvenient or unnecessary trips to the doctor, among other things, could before long become a thing of the past. Yesterday, Josh Constine of TechCruch gave us a rough transcript of what was outlined by Daniel Kraft, Singularity University‘s executive director of FutureMed, founder of StemCore systems and creator of MarrowMiner, at the Practice Fusion conference. Kraft covered "six HealthTech ideas" that could change the way medical practitioners do medicine in 2012. Unsurprisingly, most of them have a strong tie to two currently exploding markets, smartphones and social media.

The six items covered

Of the six items covered, only four are of interest to us cell phone mongers: artificial intelligence, Social Health Network, more convenient communication with doctors and the use of the smartphone as a medical tool.

Social networking can both be used to improve health by peer pressure – online sharing of one's progress on a diet could pressure users into sticking to their diet a little better. The idea is similar to Weight Watchers, just taking the shared experience online. Online networks can be used to track health data, like the path of influenza, says Constine.

The idea of scheduling a video call with your doctor instead of hopping in the car and making the trek to the doctor's office is novel, but not terribly far-fetched. The innovation is already there. As Constine explains, nevertheless, the only problems are the "regulatory and reimbursement markets around them." Physicians undoubtedly are not going to go pro bono and allow everyone to call in instead of visiting in person. Doctors will after all have to be compensated for their work. And the privacy of your health information? You might want some regulation of HIPAA previously you start discussing your medical information via video chat.

"Although some aren’t cleared for sale in US but, devices like the Alivecor electrocardiogram can monitor your heart in realtime, send the data to the cloud, and allow your cardiologist to look at it instantly. Other devices are turning phones into otoscopes for looking in your ears, or glucometers for monitoring blood sugar."

The good news is that none of this

The good news is that none of this would be very difficult to put into place. All of the research for these radical changes already exists or is just around the corner. The bad news it that few doctors are going to be on board with a lot of advancements like this. One, they will on the whole need to be fairly compensated for their work. Two, nobody likes the feeling of being replaced by a machine. Nevertheless unlikely it may seem, they largely would be in some instances – like an artificially intelligent diagnosis of a malignant melanoma cancer cell through a picture taken with a smartphone, which could circumvent much of a dermatologist's responsibilities.

I, for one, am all for less visits to the doctor's office. I would have no problem video calling my doctor to furthermore assess whether I should come in for treatment or not. For all that, I don't think I would fully trust the diagnosis given by an artificially intelligent cloud service just but. Nevertheless it might encourage me to take a trip to my dermatologist – when I if not wouldn't – if a diagnosis comes back malignant.