At the mobile health expo, I asked one vendor about storing patient diet and supplement information. The vendor was selling large medical computer systems, the kind that track all your tests, doctor's orders, medications, etc., claiming proudly that everything about your health would be stored in one spot. After some pointed questions, he did admit that perhaps that was not true since doctors in single practices outside of their medical system probably could not afford to join the network and the database didn't have a place for supplements or something like energy therapies or any other patient entered information.
So when I saw a session on nutrition I was pleased that someone was paying attention to a lifestyle change that could have significant health benefits. The rise in obesity is a world-wide problem with serious public health implications for those who gained weight on prednisone or just put on the pounds in other ways. I was one of only a handful of attendees who shared the nutrition interest and listened to a Russian doctor explain how his system would provide diet information, sort of a phone and internet version of Weight Watchers. I wasn't sure that just reading about your body mass index on a small screen or being told to eat more vegetables and less sugar would make a difference, but the speaker claimed that one of his colleagues felt it helped his patients.
An audience member mentioned that some home diet applications will scan the barcodes of food so you can track the components of your diet. That was a scary thought since real food, vegetables and fruit that you grow in your garden, food you buy at the local market or directly from a farmer who cares, the kind of food that is the very best for you, doesn't come with bar codes. I personally think that a bar-code-free diet might just be a very good one to follow with no need for an expensive tracking program or extra equipment.
One thing for sure, while these programs may or may not benefit patients, they will benefit those who sell them.
