Innovation in a Battered Global Health System

Healthcare sensors can be readily bought off the internet, and it is easy for technically-minded people today to build sophisticated equipment to collect (hack) and analyse any personal or clinical data using their own computers. Few biomedical sensors cost about the same as a drug prescription.Some individuals are already obsessed with collecting as much health-related data as they possibly can about themselves ¿ it is not just people will illnesses, but people who want to lead healthier lifestyles or be better athletes. If these people upload their data and contribute to aggregated data, they are contributing to citizen health ¿ just like open science, except tackling healthcare problems. At its simplest, they would be contributing to epidemiological studies; at its best, they would be helping build databases and web systems that other people can find their medical conditions in, and hence find support communities.This book on health innovation examines how medical professionals and health organizations can leverage technology to discover variation in treatment and outcomes, and hence improve care quality.