Consult the doctor in your phone

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Health is wealth. But as desirable as it is, it can be an expensive asset based on what it takes to engage a qualified doctor, pay hospital bills and buy quality drugs. The implication is that it is important to be aware of some other ways one can, at times, access things one will get in a conventional hospital.

One of such is provided by advanced technology, through which you can now manage your health and also keep track of how healthy you are living. Specifically, with a mobile phone in your hand, your health may not solely be in your doctor’s hands again.

As mobile technology improves, many health applications have been developed for smartphones like androids, iPhones and blackberry users to help them predict their blood pressure, glucose level and other health indicators.

With an applications like uCheck, which can be downloaded online from ApplesiTunes  store on smartphones and tablets, one can, for instance, perform a urinalysis check without going to the laboratory.

All you will need, according to the founder, Myshikin  Ingawale,  for this test is nothing more than a full plastic cup of urine, test strips, and an iPhone.

 With uCheck you only need to insert the test strips in the urine and snap the colour it displays with your iPhone. The application will analyse the colour on the urine-soaked strip to the colours on the applications  and it gives you a negative or positive result.

Without visiting a lab and with little cost attached to it, using uCheck , one can now know the level of glucose, bilirubin,  proteins, specific gravity, ketones, leukocytes, nitrites, urobilinogen, and hematuria  present in one’s urine. Besides, the key indicators in the urine will determine if one is predisposed to either kidney disease or diabetes.

Cardiograph is another application which measures the heart rate. One can also save results for future reference and keep track of multiple people with individual profiles.

The cardiograph,  which can also be downloaded online on all smartphones, using  the phone’s built-in camera, one can  take pictures of one’s fingertip and calculate the heart’s rhythm – the same approach used by professional medical equipment.

This application is a must-have because it does not require any external hardware. Using the built-in camera of your smartphone or tablet, you can get accurate readings almost instantly or in very few seconds.

Good news for the ladies, too! Women may no longer have to use the physical calendar to calculate or predict their menstrual cycle a woman-friendly app, the Ladytimer Ovulation and Period Calendar, which is available for iPhones and tablets, helps the user track their menstrual cycle.

This wonder app, which uses voice commands from the user when engaged properly, can help a woman become pregnant and even avoid pregnancy.

By entering your menstrual cycle information and voice note, this advanced menstruation calendar, which is available in five languages and portable to most mobile phones,  tracks a woman’s’ mood, temperature, ovulation  and fertility period.

It is a must-have for the modern day woman.

Another application, which could help track your chances of developing stroke, diabetes  or hypertension  over time, is the Blood Pressure Monitor.

This app uses imprints from the finger or thumb to know in which category your blood pressure falls, like if you have normal, low or high blood pressure. Or if you need to consult your physician, then the result in this app will tell you about it.

The application gets its results based on pulse rate, sweat production, fingerprint temperature and some other factors when you use your in-built camera to snap your thumb and  the phone synchronises the image to the apps to give a fairly accurate result.

The application categorises blood pressures levels into three groups; low (90/60 or lower), high (140/90 or higher), and normal (values above 90/60 and below 130/80). And it also tells when you should visit a doctor for complicated results.

PokitDok is another application launched by ‘Pinterest for Healthcare’. It lists services offered by various health care providers  and the prices they offer for such services, so patients can compare and make informed financial decisions on who will take care of their health needs based on their pockets without compromising efficacy.

This application is useful because more people would like to pay and purchase health services/products online on a fully transparent platform.

PokitDok makes it possible for patients to consider both efficacy and price when making health care decisions.

There are over 250 mobile health applications online. These include My Tracks ,iTriageHealth, BMI calculator, Workout Trainer online that can help the upwardly mobile generation  keep tabs on their health.

The drawback is that not all of them are free. You may have to pay to download some,  but going by their health benefits, stakeholders have predicted these mobile applications may be the next step at preventing people from dying of disease such as hypertension, stroke and diabetes in future.

Ingawale, founder of uCheck, says. “I firmly believe if we are to surmount the big problems in health care that are coming up for our generation, of which the rising costs are already a symptom, we have to innovate our way out. I do believe there are enough smart, committed people – on both the regulator and the innovator sides – who get that.”

Source:  punch