8. Health Care Tech

For this blog I feel I must deviate from the topic of outsourcing to share a story about how technology is currently helping my Grandmother stay independent.  Recently, my grandmother has been experiencing unexplainable attacks that cause her to get dissoriented and, on occassion, pass out unconscous.  Doctors are uncertain as to the cause of the problem.  One possible cause however, relates to her heart rate.  To test this theory, doctors must monitor my Grandmother's heartrate during the actual attacks. 

Not long ago, such constant heart-rate monitoring would have required a patient be bedridden in a hospital.  However, thanks to a remote heart monitoring device, doctors are able to watch my grandmother's heart rate without ever seeing her.

I witnessed this little device in action last Sunday.  My grandmother and I were in church when she began to experience an attack.  Instead rushing to the hospital, my Grandmom pushed a button which triggered her heart monitoring device.  After church, I drove my Grandmom to my uncle's house where she picked up the phone, dialed a number, and placed the device up to the speaking end of the telephone.  A serious of fluxiating tones rang out for several minutes.  Once the device finished its chant, my Grandma confirmed with the nurse on the other end of the line that the tone was finished, and the nurse in-turn confirmed that the transmission had been received without error. 

While I was very troubled to see my Grandmom go through this ordeal, I could not retain my interested in what had just transpired.  I quized my uncle, an M.D., on the details of the process.  The fluxuating tones that rang-out from the device reflected data about my Grandma's heart rate.  This raw data was then processed through an application that translatted the source into graphs and charts.  These graphs were then sent to my Grandmother's cardiologists.  Within 15-30 minutes of my Grandmom hanging up the phone, a cardiologist will call her (or my uncle) with the test results.

In healthcare, speed is everything.   Though I occassionally agree that technology is gradually destroying modern human values, I will never dispute how technology is improving modern human health.