Book: Connected Health

Connected Health: How mobile phones, cloud, and big data will reinvent healthcare
by Jody Ranck, DrPH
GigaOm Books, June 2012
170 pages
[Amazon Kindle edition]

Abstract

Our current healthcare system is in need of a radical reinvention. Traditional approaches have not brought the rapid change required by aging populations and the rising costs of healthcare, and government efforts too often get bogged down in partisan politics and fail to address systemic issues.

Thankfully, there is hope on the horizon. New approaches that embrace game-changing technology — mobile networks, big data, social media, and the Internet of things — could completely disrupt the status quo and transform the healthcare system. For this change to occur, we must create new institutions and collaborative markets and promote a cultural shift in how we think about medicine, health, and the body. Only then will the path to disruptive innovation be able to overcome its many obstacles and reach a future where health strategists are conversant in the tools and technologies of cooperation.

This volume provides a comprehensive overview of the emerging connected health ecosystem, including the startups and traditional technology players shaping the future of healthcare and innovative approaches by the government that demonstrate the need to move beyond the tired rhetoric of big government versus the market in healthcare.

The author

Jody Ranck, DrPH has a career in health that spans over 20 years and has worked around the world in countries such as Bangladesh, Tunisia, Haiti, Rwanda, Zambia, and Ethiopia with the UN, think tanks, and with the Nobel Peace Prize winning Grameen Bank. A noted thought leader in the area of health innovation and mHealth, he has written widely on Connected Health in global settings. In 2011 he served on a committee of the Institute of Medicine that examined information technologies and global violence prevention. He is also a popular public speaker on technology and society and is a frequent commentator for a number of global news outlets including Bloomberg News.

Although the book is written by an American writer and describes the US healthcare context, many of the emerging solutions are bound to be relevant to non-US healthcare systems as well.