We have mobile health, connected health, e-health, digital health, but no longer “wireless” health. Wireless technology has become so ubiquitous in healthcare that the word itself has lost its cachet. I have a saved search on Google News for “wireless health.” It used to be fertile ground for finding stories related to health IT. That’s no longer the case. This morning’s scan of the news turned up a lot more “noise” than anything relevant to my beat covering health IT. I’ll be deleting that from my saved searches shortly. Meanwhile, this week, the West Health Institute tweaking its focus once again by debuting a new website and, more importantly, adding a section called Successful Aging. That means ” enabling seniors to live their lives on their own terms with access to high-quality health and support services that preserve and protect one’s dignity, quality of life and independence,” according to a blog post from West Health Institute CEO Nicholas Valeriani. “[W]e are leveraging all of our previous work, such as our drive to advance medical device interoperability, in support of enabling successful aging for all seniors,” Valeriani continued. In other words, wireless technology will be a central part of this, but it’s not explicitly stated. That probably was intentional. West Health Institute, née West Wireless Health Institute, dropped the second word from its name in 2012. At the time of its founding, the La Jolla, Calif.-based institute was closely tied to wireless chip-maker Qualcomm, but West Health wanted to dispel the notion that it was an arm of Qualcomm. In a larger sense, wireless probably seemed too narrow a focus because, after all, technology is just a tool to provide better care. It doesn’t matter if it’s called wireless, mobile, digital, connected or e-health. When it comes down to it, it’s all just health. We’ve seen the term “wireless health” wane, and are starting to see the same for “m-health.” Photo: FreeDigitalPhotos user twobee
'the West Health Institute;, while an admirable aim is in risk of becoming a meaningless buzzword, according to this author : "wireless probably seemed too narrow a focus because, after all, technology is just a tool to provide better care. It doesn’t matter if it’s called wireless, mobile, digital, connected or e-health. When it comes down to it, it’s all just health. We’ve seen the term “wireless health” wane, and are starting to see the same for “m-health."