Harry Greenspun's 4 Forces Driving Personal mHealth

WASHINGTON – In a world boasting seemingly futuristic technologies such as Wi-Fi-enabled pill bottles and pills that trigger an e-mail alert upon hitting the stomach, there are still hospitals that have yet to grant patients access to their electronic health records.

Likening that reality to what other industries have done with mobile technologies, Harry Greenspun, MD, senior advisor for health care transformation and technology at the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions pointed, of all places, to Chipotle. There’s an app for the Mexican chain that lets users order a custom burrito and prepay for it, so it’s ready when they arrive to pick it up.

At one Houston-area hospital Greenspun visited recently, patients can use that Chipotle app, he said, they just can’t access their healthcare information.

“There’s a Chipotle in the hospital lobby,” Greenspun cracked. “So I asked them ‘who do you think patients view as more sophisticated?’”