There’s a concept in healthcare called the patient-centered medical home (PCMH). In 2007, the primary care providers’ (PCPs) medical societies (e.g., American Academy of Family Physicians, American Academy of Pediatrics, American College of Physicians, and the American Osteopathic Association) envisioned the PCMH to be the first touch-point for a health consumer with the health system. As such, the PCMH would be the “medical home” for a consumer, directed by a personal physician who takes responsibility for the ongoing care of patients.

For some time, I’ve been evangelizing about our actual homes as our medical (or better put, health) homes. Who better to touch base with for health than ourselves…supported by information and communication technologies that we’re already using in everyday life, informed by our health and medical data.

This concept is not going to happen 10 years from now. This will be possible in a Boomer’s lifetime. As an example of the technology platform blueprint for this idea, the drawing illustrates a joint vision between AWS (that’s Amazon’s Web Services group, which serves up a secure cloud computing platform) and Philips, which has doubled-down on digital health, for the Internet of Things (IoT) in health.

I wrote about the IoT of the Healthy Home in the Huffington Post yesterday, linked here.

This is a fast-moving space which is bolstered by several factors:

  • Consumers’ evolution toward homo informaticus, an information-seeking, multi-channel human
  • Peoples’ growing DIY sensibility for life and health
  • The declining cost of sensors, embedded in consumer-facing technologies for healthy living and home life
  • The healthcare industry’s adoption of value-based payment regimes, bundling and capitating reimbursement to care for whole people and populations
  • Clinicians’ growing acceptance of analyzing patient/person-generated data, from activity trackers, remote health monitors, and digital health tools captured in a new report from the CTA, among other trends.

Please do read my take on the “IoT of the Healthy Home” iu the Huffington Post, and let me know what you think here in a comment on Health Populi.