Listening to the news on my drive to work every morning, the world is full of risks. This past week, it was the nuclear threat from North Korea. The biggest risk at the time of listening to this news, however, was in a moment of attention slip, I could hit someone's car, or similarly, someone else could hit me. Given the statistics from US census of 11 million car accidents in 2009, which resulted 36,000 deaths, it is a far bigger risk than dying from a nuclear war (0 death in the US history) or from a mass shooting (88 deaths in 2012), headlines of recent news.
Similar to the daily risk on the road, understand the daily health risk is also quite fascinating.
Jared Diamond wrote an interesting piece about our misperception about spectacular risks from events that are out of our control versus frequent small risks that we can control. The largest health risk facing by seniors may not be the mired of diseases associated with aging, it is that 1 in a 1,000 chance of a fall in the shower. For the 75 yr old professor Diamond, he figured that he needs to reduce that chance to be much smaller to survive from 5,475 showers to live to 90.
The mobile health revolution can help us be watchful to small daily risks that may become real dangers.
Bradycardia, or a very slow heart rate, is a condition common in seniors. It is often the cause for passing out momentarily or loss of consciousness. The occurrence of bradycardia is often intermittent and hard to diagnose. Just as dangerous of a slip in the shower, a fall due to a bradycardiac event is also the debilitating event for many seniors. A mobile health solution could monitor the event much more accurately than the clinic setting, and improve the ability to diagnose and provide appropriate treatment options.
Sleep apnea is another condition that occurs frequently, but varies night to night. The current diagnostic standard is to spend one night in the sleep lab or a one night home sleep test. A mobile health solution can help monitor the daily condition and tailor treatment accordingly.
The combination of these solutions may help us understand the overall health risk, be attentive to small daily risks, and be preventive to large events that send us into the hospital.
I am excited to see what Samsung’s new ‘S Health’ feature may offer.
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