The ubiquitous cell phone, which is already part of everyday life, is poised to play an increasingly critical role in the delivery of care in the United States and around the world, predicts Don Jones, vice president of business development of healthcare at global technology company Qualcomm.

He characterizes the market sector in the “nascent, early-change” stage. But, the people he met at the conference and the products he saw indicate change will be rapid. There was a peal-and-stick sensor to monitor heart rates, technology that monitors vital signs and respiration rates, robots, and a handset that analyzes EKG patterns and sends the information to a call center.

Jones views the cell phone as primed for monitoring functions and transmitting data.

“The main thing some companies have been focused on is using the phone as a wearable device,” Jones said. “The processing power of phones are about to converge with computers.”

There are a number of reasons people have to carry cell phones at all times, he said, and monitoring their health is likely to become one of them.

“For the majority of the world, the cell phone is the only computer people will own,” Jones said.

Todd Churchill, a senior architect in the innovations department at Kansas City-based Cerner Corp. said Cerner is looking at a number of ways the normal business cell phone can be put to work in the medical world.

“One of the big goals is optimizing workflow,” he said. “The convergence of cell phone and applications does help do that.”

Beyond workflow, like Jones, Churchill sees the convergence of wireless
technology as moving from inside the walls (of a hospital, for example) to outside the walls.

The phone might be a good vehicle for storing a personal health record, Churchill said, or it could do double duty as a blood glucose monitor. Wireless technology plays a key role in reducing errors and putting accurate information immediately at the clinician’s fingertips, said Katarina Vuckovich, who is part of Cerner’s advanced technology group. Better information and better communication also has financial implications and a bearing on how quickly patients can get in and out of the hospital, Vuckovich noted.

Vuckovich’s colleague Nigel Keep sees the key to more mobile use is to make phones “hands-free.” Cerner partners with Vocera to provide voice-activated technology. It has about two dozen clients. “It’s here and now,” Vuckovich said.

“It’s not just affecting clinical workflow,” said Ben Bolin, a technology consultant at Cerner. Wireless technology, which provides more rapid communication, can improve efficiency in the supply room, in scheduling, even in keeping track of the number of available beds in the hospital.

Qualcomm’s Jones said the most uptake in the use of cell phones in
healthcare will come from institutions that have a business case for
connecting with patients anytime/anywhere, and that, he said, is in the
realm of clinical trials.

The aging population, people with chronic diseases and people interested in fitness - about 40 million people in North America - will also drive the increased use of cell phones as healthcare device, he said.