In the 60 Minutes episode aired July 31st, 2011, the inventor of the original cell phone, Motorola’s Dr. Martin Cooper, espoused on the areas and uses to which future cell phones would be applied. Without a doubt, Dr. Cooper flatly stated that medical applications on future cell phones would dominate the technology combined with the myriad fields of use already available today. This belief is also held by the top technical experts in the Health Insurance field. In the future, nearly all a physician’s patient records will be available for cell phone data bases on flash memory devices inside the phone, including x-rays. Even the FDA issued an announcement that as of July 23, 2011, stating that Smartphone applications with hardware attachments would come under regulation.
Recent years have seen an explosion in smartphone apps related to health and medicine–the Associated Press estimates that there are already over 17,000 medical apps on the market. (http://www.mobilephones-news.com/2011/07/fda-plans-to-regulate-smartphone-apps/) The cell phones of the future will make the doctor’s rounds with them, carrying patient records, x-rays, images, and other important health related information.
