This post is sponsored by Samsung Business. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
I’m always impressed by stories of doctors doing amazing things on airplanes. So, you can imagine my interest in this tweet from Dr. Rhew, Samsung’s Chief Medical Officer.
On plane. Man passes out. #SamsungCMO assists. Tracks pulse with #GearS2. Patient doing fine! #samsunghealthcare pic.twitter.com/txJ19IYizy
— David Rhew (@drhew) March 22, 2016
A doctor doing something to help someone who’s sick on a flight is nothing new. Some of you might remember that Colin Hung wrote about how Dr. Rasu Shrestha helped a passenger during his flight to HIMSS. Eric Topol is also famous for saving someone’s live on a flight and for averting an emergency landing after using his AliveCor ECG to help a man who lost consciousness.
Each of these stories should be applauded. I can only imagine how grateful these people were to have a doctor on their flight that could help. Although, the stories about Dr. Topol and the one from Dr. Rhew from the tweet above are particularly interesting to me since they both used a piece of mobile health technology to assist them in their work with the patient. In Dr. Topol’s case it was an Alivecor ECG and in Dr. Rhew’s Case it was the Samsung Gear S2 watch.
I’ve actually heard from doctors that the medical kit on an airplane is surprisingly good. However, they no doubt don’t have an ECG or heart rate monitor. So, it’s pretty amazing that each of these doctors had these tools at their disposal and that each of us could easily be carrying one of them around with us now with no trouble at all. In fact, in the case of the heart rate monitor, a lot of us are already carrying one around.
This will get even more exciting as more sensors go mainstream and are able to monitor other parts of our health. Of course, use of these sensors doesn’t have to be on a plane. It could just as well have been on a soccer field at your kid’s soccer game. In that case, you may not even need one of the other parents to be a doctor. Your cell phone could quickly Skype/Facetime in an emergency response doctor who could walk you through what was needed and assist you with the injured child. Plus, that doctor could remotely see the vital sign readings coming from sensors on/in your phone and on/in the injured person.
We’re not there yet organizationally and politically with some of what I described, but the technology is definitely there for everything I described. It’s just a matter of time for it to become a reality.
It’s an exciting time to be working in healthcare.
For more content like this, follow Samsung on Insights, Twitter, LinkedIn , YouTube and SlideShare.
Update: Here’s a nice little postscript from Dr. Rhew:
Funny postscript: As per one passenger “Was that your watch? That is so cool!” #GearS2 @SamsungBizUSA @techguy https://t.co/s1BM6NAabt
— David Rhew (@drhew) March 25, 2016
I agree with the passenger. That is so cool!
Cool story, John! Therefore a great post. Thanks for sharing.