Medicine Unplugged: The Future of Laboratory Medicine

We live amidst a digital revolution occurring inmobile healthcare. The remarkable and explosive progress in wireless medical devices has been catalyzed by the soft-ware of apps and the hardware of “adds. ” Wireless diagnostics tools such as the AliveCor smartphone-enabled electrocardiograph, the vScan pocket ultra-sound, and the CellScope smartphone-based otoscope are poised to deliver diagnostic information faster, cheaper, and at the point of care (POC).4 Leveraging the power of6 billion active cell phones, a number far greater than the number of toothbrushes or toilets in the world, these devices can be used anywhere there is a mobile signal, thereby achieving a “flattening ” of the Earth with respect to access to mobile-health technol-ogies (1). Now, the convergence of smartphones an