that receiving healthcare from a smartphone is becoming both a technological norm and socially accepted. Telemedicine of today is perhaps the sci-fi tech of 20 years ago, similarly the health (tech) innovation of tomorrow is predicated by our imagination of today.

As we imagine how we can better healthcare, we can take cues from other pervasive presence of technology in our lives. Mobile technology and smartphones have become common and integral part of our lives, can we transform healthcare from being a single point interaction, temporally, to ubiquitous healthcare? Healthcare persistent, prevalent, and embedded in our daily lives. Within other domains, we are slowly moving towards integrating our daily lives with technology, can we do something similar with healthcare?

If we see telemedicine as a starting point for enhancing healthcare and ‘embed’ it as the norm for healthcare, then we can use that as a starting point for ubiquitous healthcare. Why use telemedicine as a starting point? For multiple reasons, it is a stepping stone for digital health innovation, it opens a door for acceptance at social & organizational level within healthcare, and enables users (Clinicians and Patients) to develop maturity of practice of using advanced health solutions. As we become comfortable with the idea of a health consultation right from a smart phone, we can shift to more complex forms of digital healthcare – the crux being ubiquitous and seamlessness. Smart phones enable the next step in mobile health, mHealth, by combining existing and emerging solutions seamlessly integrated across the healthcare and patient life continuum. Considering that patients spend most of their life outside of a healthcare setting and the high use of smart phones, it makes sense to wrap healthcare around the patient within the smart phone.