HEALTH iNNOVATION: Faculty member Mike Evans Teaming with Apple
Though we’re making advances, Canada lags behind other countries, such as Denmark and Sweden, when it comes to digitizing healthcare and engaging the public: Faculty member Dr. Mike Evans has been working to change that.
Between his Whiteboard Med School for the Public on YouTube, which have received almost 15 million views, the Mini Med School at the University of Toronto, and his role as Chair of Patient Engagement in Child Nutrition at U of T, Mike Evans has combined creativity and summarized best evidence with the new ways we share information such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. He has launched a new field called Peer to Peer Healthcare, where people share engaging high quality medical information with their social network. This network could be their friends, people with the same health care challenges, caregivers to their patients, communities, and so on.
Now he’ll be taking his efforts to the next level: working with Apple in California while doing part time clinic at Stanford University.
Though he can’t say too much about his role – Apple is tight-lipped about future innovations – Evans is excited to be working on worldwide health-care innovation.
“I’m interested in how to nudge people toward better habits, healthier lives and better disease management,” says Evans.
He believes the way we engage patients will change dramatically over the coming years. For instance, right now a physician sees a patient for an ailment such as high blood pressure, prescribes them medication and then follows up weeks or months later.
In the future, Evans believes that after seeing the patient, physicians will be able to prescribe apps that can provide information to patients on their ailment, track lifestyle factors such as diet and exercise, remind them to take their medication and monitor their conditions remotely. All this provides physicians with more accurate, long term data that both patients and caregivers can visualize. “We have such an opportunity to make it easier to do the right thing the other 360 plus days that people don’t see doctors.”
Evans says his experience as a practicing family physician gives him the advantage of being able to understand the nuances and best practice regarding most medical conditions.
“Being a generalist means I’m not pigeon-holed into one speciality,” says Evans, who says that many technology companies tend to work with niche researchers and specialists “…and many of the big learnings are just “human behaviour 101” that comes when you observe average people trying to self-manage various illness in primary care. Looking less at what people know and looking more about what they do every week and how they may actually use health technology in everyday life.”
Evans will continue to be connected to the DFCM as a faculty member throughout his time at Apple, with the hope of eventually collaborating on research or other projects in the future. “Apple thinks a lot about the user experience and I think this dovetails well with the many efforts here at the DFCM to improve the quality of care.”
“I’m still getting my feet wet in California,” he says. “Who knows what opportunities will present themselves.”
