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A smartphone links patients' bodies and doctors' computers, which in turn are connected to the Internet, which in turn is connected to any smartphone anywhere. The new devices could put the management of an individual's internal organs in the hands of every hacker, online scammer, and digital vandal on Earth.

We're moving to this integration of biomedicine, information technology, wireless and mobile now - an era of digital medicine. Even my stethoscope is now digital. And of course, there's an app for that.

Electronic medical records are, in a lot of ways, I think the aspect of technology that is going to revolutionize the way we deliver care. And it's not just that we will be able to collect information, it's that everyone involved in the healthcare enterprise will be able to use that information more effectively.

The mobile phone... is a tool for those whose professions require a fast response, such as doctors or plumbers.

We're all essentially surgically connected to our smartphones, and we're still in the early stages of realizing their medical potential. But they should be a real threat to the medical profession.

Putting aside competitive interests for a new kind of collaboration, Maryland pioneered a real-time encounter notification service to alert primary care doctors when their patients are hospitalized.

Among many other things, a smartphone functions as a handheld digital sensor for the physical world. In other words, we don't necessarily need our real world things to be directly connected, when the Web interface in our mobile devices provides the network access and intelligence.

Whether it's by helping us search for health-related information, connecting us with doctors through online portals, or enabling us to store and retrieve our medical records online, the Internet is starting to show the promise it has to transform the way people interact with and improve their own health and wellness.

If I'm serious about patients and their GPs being able to have more control of their health care, I can't have a top-down system that imposes restrictions on the services they need.

I don't foresee a future where people don't have some sort of phone that's like a computer. I don't foresee a future where those phones don't have cameras in them. That spells a future where smartphones are the status quo. You have to ask yourself how you allow people to communicate what's in their lives.