Detecting Parkinson’s with a Phone Call

Smartphones can do just about anything these days.  I will not be at all surprised when they develop a smartphone to clean your house, and I will also be the first one in line to buy it.  One of the new amazing technologies that is being developed by Max Little, Ph.D. at MIT.

The Parkinson’s Voice Initiative is developing a voice based diagnostic to aid in the detection of Parkinson’s Disease.  Dr. Little is also a TEDGlobal 2012 fellow and you can find his TED Talk on the subject on this page.

You can also find a great interview with Dr. Little by the people at MedGadget on their website.

According to MedGadget at least 5% of Americans over 80 have Parkinson’s in some form.  Obviously the first step in helping these people is detection.  This new technology has a detection accuracy of 98.6 overall accuracy.  That is pretty incredible when you consider the relatively simple concept.

Like so many of these technologies, the smartphone can bring these benefits to people who never could have used them before.  A patient wouldn’t even have to visit a lab to make the recordings, they could simply call in on their phone.

Technology like this can’t help but make me wonder what other diseases we could be detecting and curing that we haven’t even thought of yet.  What diseases do you think could be aided by smartphones?

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August 21, 2012 I Written By

Filed Under: Health Care  mHealth  Mobile Health Care  Smart Phones
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Stanford Professor Discusses the Future of Technology in Healthcare at TEDxMaastricht

Smart Phone Health Care is all about technology in healthcare.  The amazing things that we can do with our phones.  The cool apps we can download.  The amazing little gadgets that we can buy.  All of the little things that can make life more fun, more healthy, and hopefully longer.

While doing research for one of our other blogs, EHR and EMR Videos, I came across a great video from the TEDx series.  TED talks are something I was very familiar with, and utterly enjoy.  TEDx was new to me, but is essentially the same idea just available on a broader and more local scale.  The topics are equally important, and the speakers are equally entertaining.

The talk was given by Daniel Kraft who is a professor at Stanford during TEDxMaastricht.  He really does a fantastic job of hitting on a whole lot of areas of healthcare, and how technology is making so much more possible than we ever had before.

Rather than rehash everything I have already written I will simply direct you to my other post which can be found here. I highly encourage you to take a look at the video as it will completely blow your mind with the technology that already exists and how it is going to change the way that billions of people live their lives now and in the future.

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July 22, 2011 I Written By

Filed Under: Health Care  Healthcare IT  iPad  iPhone  Medical Devices  mHealth  Mobile Health Care  Smart Phones  Social Networking Health
Tags:Daniel Kraft  Future Healthcare Technology  Healthcare Technology Video    Stanford Professor    TEDxMaastricht