ACT: Looking forward, what does the future of bring-your-own-device (BYOD) adoption look like?
Liu: I think it’s already common. I think you’ll see a shift towards using it for more novel or preventive measures to more serious conditions. And so, I think that will gradually grow into that direction as the consumer devices become more and more medical-grade capable. And there’s more apps that are also qualified to be medical grade that run on those devices. I think what is a natural progression is that there will be more powerful devices that can actually do more in terms of real diagnostics—potentially even some treatment. So, I see it evolving in that direction.
And I think maybe the other thing is with consumer devices/BYOD, they also allow a larger population to get access to healthcare. From a global standpoint, that’s probably the most important thing because we take it for granted here. Or certain countries that have healthcare, or accessible healthcare, but there’s a lot of parts of the world that don’t really have that. And these consumer devices, maybe that’s their first interaction with healthcare in some places. So I think that’s an interesting dynamic.