I find the opportunities here to be endless and positive. I have thought that one doctor in an office on computer with two or three nurses, or medical assistants in the field could be so much more efficient. The nurses could do vitals and observations and relay to the doctor. The doctor has no wasted time. Also in my field of caring for individuals with behavior issues, sometimes getting to the er or doctor is a dangerous challenge itself. The transit cost and burden on emergency services for individuals in facilities could also be saved. And ultimately I hope this could have the effect of people taking charge of there own care and bring competition in. I just hope these ideas don't get regulated to death or stopped before they start by the big care industry.

Matthew Bodo the title subtlety insinuates "who will be the next group not to follow the rules in Healthcare".. I think Über is a poor analog given the run-ins with country, state, and local governments.

one of the answers is our organization Solar Ear. we are developing a holistic hearing health centre using your Smartphone. you can have your hearing tested for $1 with results being se
nt via the cloud to a professional and we will be able to remotely program your phone to become a hearing aid. ( $20.) we will have a hearing therapy app as well as a fee maternal hearing loss prevention apps for expecting mothers. we are an award winning humanitarian social business.

uber is a legal failure... Just saying.

Mark Armstrong, MD, MSBE Matthew & Martijn, I agree that the Uber analogy may not be 100% accurate. Can you explain any "rules of Healthcare" that mobile applications for house calls and other personalized services would be breaking?
When you combine the thoughts from this article with new wearable health-monitoring devices, it stands to reason that healthcare of the future will likely be decentralized and cloud-based.

We are looking forward to seeing this happen.

Yi Dong if you view a easy to use point of care device as a car, I can see this happening.

Matthew Bodo Hi Mark, I am not aware of any consumer-grade health monitoring wearables that are classified as medical devices .... yet. I think when (not if) it happens, we'll have to redefine the concept of "big data" and think of how best to process the vast amounts of information streaming in.

The opportunity to spot trends at an individual level or even at a geographic level (think: will populations near the recent EPA disaster all show similar health trends?) will be of great value to patients, payers, doctors, researchers, municipalities, and larger governments.

tl;dr - it's gonna be cool when wearables becomes a thing.

Ee Bin Liew not sure of the question...
Uber the concept of simplifying the process of going from point A to point B?
Uber the app?
Uber the smart utilization of available resources?
Uber the legal disaster?

Uber, to me, is more than an app. I use it all over the world, discovered that it works differently for different countries, met many interesting people, provided a simple, cashless process globally which is one to emulate, and got me from point A to point B (if I repeatedly forgive its GPS !)

I would caution a pause to examine the consequences. Taxi, and a number of the new "uber-mimics' are from the 'service' industry, and do not have the same controls or fatal consequences of other professional industries (eg aviation, healthcare, nuclear surety, etc). While we see the popping up of many new types of provision of healthcare services, many are scams and the healthcare providers (doctors, nurses, technicians, etc) have not been screened adequately to guarantee the quality of healthcare provided. In the rush to join the new 'healthcare gold rush', it will take only a few deaths to rein in the enthusiasm. There are legitimate (licensed) home healthcare services already(one of the fastest growing markets) and as mentioned before, telemedicine is making slow but increasing progress. Healthcare is NOT a taxi ride.

I think Uber is used here as a euphemism
The answer is tht technology is Healthcare is much more older, deep rooted and integrated then many of these consumer facing businesses. So there will be several Uber but none will be as dominating

Nick Cobb Here's what is happening and will expand in the near future. In the morning, a person will go to their bathroom and attach their smart phone to an added device. This device will have a place for a urine sample and a blood sample. Also, an attached blood pressure measuring device and cardio device. Via one's phone, this info will be sent to one's local doctor and a Physician Asst. will respond via the phone within a half hour with preliminary info on the info. A complete physical at home in minutes!

Nick Cobb Also, this same technology can be adapted for home mammograms and many other medical procedures.

I think overall an industry transformation is ahead of us, that peeks everybody's interest in designing smart technology enabled solutions that will make our health care needs to be met in more affordable and flexible manner, very much like the transformation of banking industry in the last decade or so..

Terry Fagen It's really encouraging to have these conversations and to see startups invest in solving these real-world health problems. Perhaps a better outcome would be to have governments and "Payors", more proactively, encourage adoption of these great ideas and technologies.

Mark Armstrong, MD, MSBE Amen, Terry! Proactive & preventative healthcare will make life better for everyone.

Chris Lim I would personally love to see how the accessibility and potential of EMR can be further realised. With centralised data, extending services or technology from that point onwards becomes a much more powerful proposition and holistic solution.

It's not about Uber per se... it's about the ability of new companies (and existing ones) to define and implement circular economy schemes for their assets,How can companies take the most advantage of existing assets? and, How con mobile technologies get the assets close to when these are needed? That's the main characteristic of Uber, and I would only feel a bit worried about the regulatory implications of replicating the scheme for healthcare. Who would be the ultimate responsible of the safety of the medical device / service / patient?

great group don't know how much can be duplicated at home versus an walk in clinic like cvs if you are really that ill maybe you should be in the er how much technology can you take to the home? 70 percent of all medical decisions are made by bloodwork and home health care agencies will go to the home to draw blood if doc orders it not sure it will work on an uber model but people are trying in nyc manhattan and lax