Healthcare providers take great pride in developing healthcare delivery systems that are patient-centered. Nevertheless, delivery systems remain fragmented and near impossible for patients to navigate when assuring that those who are providing the care, the patient, the payer and the ancillary support such as laboratory and pharmacy are all on the same page.

Great strides have been made in some systems, but we are still far from the seamless interconnected system envisioned and strived for over the past many years. While traditional healthcare continues to develop the vision, consumers are beginning to create their own version of patient-centered care.

It starts with a point-of-service device held in the palm of a patient’s hand – a smartphone or another mobile device that supports their current or desired health state. The mobile healthcare “tsunami” is descending upon traditional healthcare as consumers embrace these innovative and ever-mobile technologies. No longer content with being dependent on providers telling them what to do when and where it will be done, consumers are mobilizing their care in the following ways.

Baby boomers, Generation Xers and Millennials are embracing mobile technology that supports an “in the moment” immediate contact with feedback and reinforcement on their health state and how to improve it. Many personal wellness modalities are also reinventing how they provide support by mobilizing their offerings to meet this new demand. 

Mobile healthcare can occur easily wherever an individual consumer is, whenever it is desired or required. It occurs with a touch of a screen, a sound of a voice, or seamless sensing capabilities from a wireless device that collects multiple data points and provides immediate feedback to reinforce, adjust and enable active health enrichment and independence.

Individuals with chronic or co-morbid health conditions are also taking control of their own management and coordination of care through home monitoring devices that provide real-time and continuous or episodic biometric measurements of key health state indicators. Providers can use these measurements to detect trends that warrant professional intervention or communication with the patient to support his or her self-management and take corrective actions that reverse the troublesome trends before requiring hospitalization. Adult learning, through experiential processes of working directly in the co-management of their health state with a professionally licensed provider, provides a tremendous opportunity to move from dependence to independence in self-care.

Frail elderly or fragile medical populations are increasingly embracing aging at home or otherwise remain independent of traditional healthcare delivery models by deploying in-home sensors and other devices that can monitor daily living activities and notify family or responders that a situation has occurred requiring intervention. Wireless technologies are rapidly being developed to support these in-need individuals and give them opportunities to remain as actively engaged in their current surroundings as possible.

Healthcare mobility is upon us. While traditional healthcare settings will not go away, they will move forward to incorporate more mobile solutions from much more empowered consumers who wish to fully manage their own way to a healthier future.