Smartphones: The next generation in healthcare? Session will discuss future industry impact

During the Next Generation Dx summit 2017 in Washington, DC, Dr Neil Polwart — Novarum DX founder and BBI group head of mobile — will discuss the impact smartphones will have on the healthcare industry in the next few years.

Polwart will be highlighting the potential of smartphones to shift diagnostic testing from labs to the point-of-care during a keynote speaker panel on Disruptive Technologies in Lab Medicine.

“The Next Generation Dx summit is a major event within the healthcare calendar and I’m delighted to be taking part in the summit’s technology panel discussion,” commented Polwart. “It’s an incredibly exciting time to be working in the healthcare sector. Disruptive technologies are driving a step-change in diagnostic testing at a significant rate — and the smartphone is a catalyst in empowering patients to conduct their own test and manage their own conditions, from the comfort of their own home.”

“Healthcare is rapidly moving away from a scenario where diagnostic testing could only be carried out in a highly controlled and regulated laboratory,” he continued. “We are now entering a landscape where patients can conduct their diagnostic tests with the same level of accuracy, compared to lab conditions, and share results instantly with healthcare professionals — using only the smartphone in their pocket.”

The Next Generation Dx summit will be held 15–18 August in Washington, DC, and is anticipated to attract over 1,000 industry professionals from the diagnostics arena.

Novarum — a wholly owned subsidiary of BBI solutions — offers a software tool, the Novarum Reader, that enables users to read and share the results of diagnostic assays using a smartphone. This technology allows testing in any location and results can be shared quickly via the cloud using a specifically designed web interface or existing data management platforms.