It's time to Vote, but not on a Candidate!

I recently joined the Digial Health group on LinkedIn, led by Paul Sonnier, who has amassed a huge group of followers on Twitter and LinkedIn. I have found it to be one of the best places for bleeding edge health technology news and great discussions! Paul recently posed the question, "What is the biggest human benefit derived from the use of digital health solutions?" There were five categories to choose from: Disease diagnosis, disease prediction (especially genomics), disease management, disease prevention and reduced radiation exposure (imaging). The winner by a fairly wide margin was disease management, which garnered 49% of the votes. Coming in second? Disease prevention with 31% of the vote.

The discussion that accompanied the poll was very rich and worth checking out. My vote was cast for disease prevention. In my mind, if we can finally give individuals the tools to more proactively manage and maintain their health, we won't need to focus so heavily on disease diagnosis. What do you think? Which item would you have chosen?

For an additional reference, check out this blog written by Paul about the results of his poll:

http://popperandco.com/2012/07/poll-results-what-is-the-single-greatest-health-benefit-afforded-by-digital-health-solutions/