SAN FRANCISCO | An emerging digital revolution in medicine is underway. Beyond consumer-driven apps that count calories or encourage exercise, mobile technology is beginning to significantly change how doctors practice medicine.

"We're at a very interesting intersection of technology impacting clinical care, which hasn't really changed dramatically in 50 or 60 years," said Dr. Michael Blum, director of the Center for Digital Health Innovation at UCSF. "When we look back in 10 years, we're going to be amazed how far we've gone."

The ubiquity of smartphones has already had an effect on clinical practice in numerous obvious ways. Doctors can speedily access important information such as drug dosage recommendations or disease profiles as well as a patient's medical information. They can also more easily communicate about patients with specialists or other colleagues.

Dr. Paul Abramson began experimenting with other uses for mobile medical technologies on himself. He was getting regular headaches, with little clue as to why. A geek of sorts who earned a master's degree in electrical engineering from Stanford before heading to medical school, Abramson enjoys putting himself in the role of lab rat.

Using his phone, he started tracking everything from caffeine intake and mood to barometric pressure and light exposure.

This was possible, of course, because of the incredible number of gadgets all rolled into his iPhone. It turned out the headaches were related to sleep; if he got enough shut-eye, the headaches disappeared.

About a year ago, he debuted the Quant Coach program at his practice. The program's roots stem from the tracking Abramson did on himself.

"I just didn't feel like I had enough information coming back to me from patients," he said.

His patients are instructed to track varying sets of information, entering the data into an app called Mymee. That data is sent to Abramson's office and compiled in an open-source data visualization software called FluxStream. An employee called a "quant coach" in his office then pores over this quantified data, summarizing it for Abramson.

He said the methodology has allowed him to solve some complex medical riddles -- physical ailments, for example, that wound up related to less-than-obvious causes, such as environment. He can keep close tabs on his patients and amass a rich picture of all the factors that might be contributing to an illness.

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Digital revolution changing how doctors practice medicine