Name: Sven

Year: Senior

Major: Biological Sciences

CFS Program: Field Studies in Public Health

This spring quarter, I have been working as an intern at the Mercy Hospital in South Side Chicago. I’ve learned a lot about the integration of technology with medical practice. My current project is to compose a directory of phone apps that physicians can use in patient care.

There are a wide variety of medical phone apps (also known as mHealth, short for mobile health). One common type is clinical reference apps, which contain everything from disease risk calculators to drug interaction guides to disease manuals. Instead of carrying around a stack of textbooks while seeing patients, doctors can now whip out their phones to quickly check a fact.

Another category of commonly used mHealth apps are self-monitoring apps. Patients with chronic conditions such as diabetes or high blood pressure can use these apps to log their blood sugar or blood pressure levels. These apps then present this information to both the patient and the physician in an easy-to-read format. This improves doctor-patient communication dramatically.

My internship thus far has helped me learn more about two of my main interests, medicine and technology. It has been fascinating to see how the development of technology has been integrating into medicine.