Mobile identity technology is playing an increasingly important role in the world of healthcare. This is largely thanks to the increasingly sophisticated biometric sensors present in mobile devices and smartwatches, with companies like Apple and Samsung letting users track physiological metrics, such as heart rate, in specialized apps. These systems are primarily designed for fitness tracking, but they are also opening up avenues to clinical care applications.
Related to these innovations are the growing number of smart wearable devices capable of collecting detailed biometric data and even transmitting it to healthcare providers. Many of these are, again, fitness-tracking devices, though a growing number of wearables are designed specifically for clinical care. There are also more clinically-focused biometric devices designed to pair with a smartphone to facilitate remote care.
Meanwhile, some healthcare authorities are now allowing patients to access medical records through their mobile devices, thanks in part to the reliability of the kind of mobile authentication technology found in contemporary smartphones. And other mobile-driven innovations are still emerging, such as Augmented Reality-based AI assistants that can perform virtual checkups on patients in the comfort of their own homes, and maps of aggregated location data collected from smartphone devices that can give public health officials a bird’s eye view of people’s movements during a viral outbreak.
There are myriad ways in which mobile identity technology can play a role in healthcare, and surely many have yet to be discovered.
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