CNBC reports today that Facebook was recently designing a research project that would match users' Facebook data with their medical information. The project has since been halted, but the company had approached a number of health organizations includ…
Today’s been a busy day for Apple, with the company launching updates for iOS, tvOS, and watchOS, but it’s not quite done with the news. Continue reading 
Apple released iOS 11.3 today, and along with a slew of other fun additions, the update includes a new feature: Health Records. If you're a patient within certain health systems — like Duke, NYU Langone, Stanford and Yale — you can view your medica…Admit it, you’ve done it: you notice a strange ache or a bump where there wasn’t one before, so you run to the internet. In mere minutes, you’re convinced you have cancer, or a parasite, or a rare disease that was only seen one time on the other side of the world. Even when your doctor tells you it’s just a rash and you shouldn’t worry about it, you can’t help but wonder: is she sure?
Turns out, that sort of self-diagnosis does more than just stress you out — it has lasting repercussions on medicine as a whole. Patients who’ve spent too much time on WebMD are pressuring doctors into over-prescribing antibiotics, which in turn has bolstered the rise of antibiotic resistance.
According to Wired, heath care workers say they worry about bad patient satisfaction and negative reviews online creates a “Yelp effect,” which drives doctors to make decisions based on what patients want instead of, you know, actual medicine.
And it seems patients expect antibiotics: a 2016 study of a large group of medical records showed that a third of antibiotics prescriptions were written for viral infections, which, as you might know, do not respond to antibiotics.
“Providers believe — whether it’s accurate or not — that there is a business reason, in terms of customer satisfaction, patient retention, to give patients what they want,” David Hyun, a pediatric infectious disease physician who recently directed a review of why doctors mis-prescribe antibiotics, told Wired. “We frequently hear providers say, ‘If I don’t give the antibiotics, the patient will go across the street, to urgent care or another primary care practice, and get them there.’”
The post The Internet Made Everyone a Medical Expert, and Patients Are Worse for It appeared first on Futurism.
Statistically speaking, you’re probably reading this on your smartphone. It goes everywhere with you. You care for it, put it in a case, keep it topped up with power, and it even sits by your side all night long.
Wouldn’t it be great if your iPhone could take care of you too? It’s not just a nice idea; it’s a feature built into iOS. Set up Medical ID today, and you can rest a little easier knowing any vital medical information and next of kin details are just a few taps away.
Let’s have a look at this potentially life-saving feature, and how to set it up on your own iPhone.
Medical ID is a safety feature built into your iPhone which can inform others of important medical information in the event of an emergency. You can store the following information in your Medical ID, which is viewable by anyone who knows how to access it:
Keep in mind that there’s no way of limiting this information to strictly emergency personnel. Anyone with physical access to your iPhone can find your Medical ID if they’re looking for it. This does raise some potential privacy concerns, but it’s a trade you’ll have to make if you want to use the feature.
Findings suggest that many paramedics and emergency responders do check for Medical ID. However, many others are unaware of the feature’s existence. Considering the feature was added to the iPhone in 2014 with iOS 8, it’s likely that awareness has grown among medical professionals over the past few years.
One Redditor posed this question to the /r/apple community in 2015, with a mixed bag of results. One trauma nurse and another paramedic confirmed that they’ve used it to great effect. Others either didn’t find the information useful, or didn’t know how to access it. Some were frustrated that not enough people make use of the feature.
One respondent on Quora noted: “When it’s at that point where an individual can’t provide any info it’s too late to be digging around the pocket for a phone. We resort to our own step by step assessment and procede [sic] with the appropriate treatment. We don’t always need to know what your past medical history is to treat the emergency.”
It’s increasingly likely that paramedics will receive exposure to the feature as part of their standard training. Yet it seems like more needs done to ensure that people are creating a Medical ID, and that emergency responders are trained to access the information.
You can create your Medical ID by launching the Health app and tapping on the Medical ID tab. You can also head to Contacts, tap your name at the top, and tap Create Medical ID at the bottom. Use the Edit button to add, remove, or change any information, then hit Done to save your changes.
Important: For your Medical ID to be useful, you’ll want to enable the Show When Locked option on this screen. This will enable others to access the feature without unlocking your iPhone first.
You can add as much information as you like to the various fields, but keep in mind the privacy implications of the information you share. Your date of birth, name, and picture can be used to positively ID you. Any emergency contacts you nominate will have their phone number displayed, and whoever has your phone can call them.
When you use the Emergency SOS shortcut (instructions below) and proceed with an emergency call, iOS will send a map of your current location to any emergency contacts listed in this field.
To access your (or anyone else’s) Medical ID, use one of the following methods:
Despite this information being easily accessible to those who know how, no other apps can access your Medical ID.
As of watchOS 3, the Apple Watch is both an emergency call button and a medical ID bracelet. When you press and hold the side button, you’ll see the Emergency SOS feature. This is where you’ll find the information listed in your Medical ID.
Considering many emergency responders are trained to look for a medical bracelet for clues about any existing conditions like diabetes or epilepsy, the Apple Watch might be better than your iPhone for this purpose. The feature has only been a part of the Watch for around two years, so first responders may not yet be familiar with it.
If you keep holding the button, you’ll connect to emergency services (your watch will detect and call the right number, regardless of where you are). Your Watch will then send your location to any emergency contacts listed in Medical ID.
Most of us probably won’t ever have any use for Medical ID, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth taking five minutes out of your day to set it up. If you’re OK with divulging some potentially life-saving information, Medical ID could really help emergency personnel deliver a higher standard of care in an emergency.
Image Credit: Wavebreakmedia/Depositphotos
Medical ID is a built-in feature of your iPhone’s Health app that gives ambulance crews and other emergency first responders fast access to potentially life-saving information about any allergies or medical conditions you have, even if your iPhone is locked.
Even if you don’t suffer from any health conditions, it’s still worth enabling Medical ID, because it can also provide other vital information about you to emergency services, such as your blood type and who to contact in an emergency. This article shows you how to set up Medical ID in iOS 11.
Continue reading How to Set Up Medical ID on Your iPhone
What if your employer was really invested in your health? I don’t mean just providing you with insurance. I mean operating the clinic itself.
Well, Apple employees will soon find out: the company plans to launch new medical practices, named AC Wellness, to treat Apple employees in spring 2018, CNBC reports. The company will start with two clinics in Santa Clara County, California, near its headquarters in Cupertino.
“AC Wellness is an independent medical practice dedicated to delivering compassionate, effective healthcare to the Apple employee population,” according to the AC Wellness homepage.
There are already numerous job listings for an acute care physician, primary care physician, exercise coach, nurse coordinator, and more. According to CNBC, Apple is also looking for “designers” to create programs focused on preventing disease and promoting healthy behavior. Furthermore, the clinics will serve as a testing ground for various health-related products and services.
Apple isn’t the first company to try its hand at healthcare — last month Amazon announced that it intends to create a healthcare company of its own with Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase. Amazon, however, hasn’t announced when its company will go live, so chances are Apple’s initiative will open first.
The two corporate giants’ moves towards commandeering their employees’ healthcare bring the future of the U.S. healthcare landscape into question. Companies already exert a modicum of control over their employees’ healthcare options and other benefits, and companies like Google have begun adding on-site wellness centers, physicians, and chiropractors for their workers.
Companies don’t do this out of the goodness of their hearts. Health issues cause 69 million workers to skip work each year, reducing economic output by $ 260 billion per year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Healthier employees also cost less in the long run because their insurance is cheaper. In short, lower healthcare costs equals higher profits.
So all these benefits, this new corporate obsession with subsidizing healthcare? It’s employers looking out for their bottom line.
So far, none of the reports have discussed the potential privacy issues that may arise from an employer that operates the clinic where an employee seeks care. There are strict laws governing patient privacy, which Apple will have to be sure not to violate as it both employs and treats people.
Amazon and Apple don’t have their own healthcare companies up and running just yet, so we can only speculate. Hopefully their moves might change employee health benefits for the better.
The post Apple to Launch Medical Practices to Treat Its Own Employees appeared first on Futurism.
Apple is planning to open two “AC Wellness” health clinics for its employees and their families this spring, reports CNBC. The clinics, detailed on an accompanying AC Wellness website, will serve Apple employees in Santa Clara County, which is where its Apple Park and One Infinite Loop campuses are located.
One of the clinics, the Apple Park Wellness Center, will be located on the Apple Park campus, according job listings posted LinkedIn, Glassdoor, and Indeed.
AC Wellness Network is an independent medical practice exclusively dedicated to delivering compassionate, effective healthcare to the Apple employee and dependent population at the Apple Wellness Centers in Santa Clara Valley, including the new Apple Park Wellness Center. AC Wellness Network believes that having trusting, accessible relationships with our patients, enabled by technology, promotes high-quality care and a unique patient experience.
AC Wellness job listings also describe the clinic experience, which is meant to offer a “unique concierge-like healthcare experience” for employees and their dependents. Several positions are open at the AC Wellness locations ahead of their planned opening this spring, with Apple seeking physicians, nurses, a clinical exercise coach, a behavioral health partner, and more.
As Apple prepares to launch its AC Wellness clinics, it has scaled back its partnership with Crossover Health, its current in-house clinic provider. Apple considered purchasing Crossover Health at one point, but no deal materialized after several months of discussion.
Sources that spoke to CNBC said that Apple plans to use its medical clinics as a way to “test out” its health services and products. Apple is exploring several health-related advancements, such as non-invasive blood glucose monitoring, and it has begun heavily investing in health-related research with CareKit and ResearchKit.
Most recently, Apple launched a medical study in partnership with Stanford to determine whether the Apple Watch can accurately predict irregular heart rhythms. The study is live and can be joined by downloading the Apple Heart Study app from the App Store.
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The field of medicine has, arguably, been more positively affected by modern deep learning techniques than any other industry. And, despite the unending deluge of panic-ridden articles declaring AI the path to apocalypse, we’re now living in a world where algorithms save lives every day. Welcome to Utopia. Thanks to AI, an iPhone can detect cancer and a smart watch can detect a stroke. Machine learning is infiltrating and optimizing nearly every aspect of medicine from the way 911 emergency services are dispatched to assisting doctors during surgery. You can even quit smoking or kick your opiate addiction with the…
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