The future of health care is social, and techie

Your favorite social apps will soon enhance more than just your lifestyle.

If you think it's cool sharing a dish at your favorite restaurant with your friends via Facebook or Twitter, imagine using social media to quit smoking, lose weight or avoid a debilitating knee injury or heart attack. "There's no more compelling app than one for your health or (the health of) your loved ones," says Dr Leslie Saxon, a cardiologist who runs the University of Southern California's Center for Body Computing.

The health care industry is ripe for innovation thanks to a wide array of wireless medical sensors that are either in development or already being tested, Saxon said. The health industry "is where the music industry was with the vinyl LP," Saxon says.

The goal of all this invasive technology will be to give patients more control over their medical data and, therefore, over their own health care, Saxon said during her talk, titled "The Future of Networked Humans." "Consumers will be able to curate their own sensors and track the data they want," Saxon says.

[March 10]