**5. What should a POCD innovation contribute to?**

Various recent government, industry, vision, and association reports state that technological innovations in general practice should contribute to two core values: "quality of life" and "affordability of care." This can, therefore, be seen as a qualitative and financial specification of the overarching objective: "accommodating the growing and changing demand for care." But, today, it does not stop there. Here is a "Top Ten" of frequently mentioned "innovation requirements" found in the various relevant reports.

### **5.1 A POCD innovation in general practice must**


## **6. Point-of-care internet diagnostics**

The advent of technological diagnostics is no longer just a matter that concerns the healthcare professional. The patient or his immediate loved one will search for themselves if they cannot find a suitable answer to their question in regular care.

They find their way on digital patient forums, fellow sufferer forums, and the countless websites that present themselves as particularly reliable in diagnosing health problems. In any case, this development affects the practice of general practitioners. But the patient also comes to the specialist more often with Internet prior knowledge.

### **6.1 What is the quality of Internet diagnostics?**

Few representative scientific results are known about medical diagnostic Internet services and what, for example, health effects, risks, and patient satisfaction are. According to these companies, which claim to be based on "years of best-practice experiences" and "scientifically substantiated action," on average at least equivalent to a visit to a general practitioner, and sometimes even more reliable compared to the diagnoses and the advice obtained during a visit to the GP practice.

With techniques from artificial intelligence, the facial expression of the patient is also mapped and interpreted (is the conversation partner tense? Is there perhaps a question of pain?), whereby the self-learning ability of the systems used continues to reduce the margins of error. An app for transdermal blood analyzes is currently being worked on, and uploading the spectrum of a urine sample at home will also be an option. It is easy to guess what else the quantum computer can offer in the future [24–26].

### **6.2 A self-learning avatar**

Is it not mostly advanced computer programs with extensive databases and search engines that do the work? Probably, at least to an increasing extent. Complaints that are relatively easy to understand are diagnosed by a friendly avatar in an unmistakable human guise; you can choose one that suits your preference: do you want to start a conversation with a man, a woman, an oriental, or a western appearance? The choice is yours. Photos of your skin, eyes, mucous membranes, etc. can provide additional diagnostic resources and can be uploaded immediately for review [24, 25, 27].

### **6.3 Commercial services in the diagnostic technology market**

At the moment, (commercial) diagnostic service providers are appearing on the market who are happy to take work off the hands of the general practitioner and the nurse specialist. They even try to tempt the patient not to go to a general practice.

Advertisements in the form of YouTube films with street interviews in which citizens express their dissatisfaction with the travel time, poor accessibility, parking problems, waiting in the waiting room, the inconveniences they experience in the transfer of care, the problems in obtaining (repeat) prescriptions, the alleged dangers of contamination, going to the pharmacy with again long waiting times, etc. According to these stakeholders, it appears that a substantial part of the patients is ashamed of their own body and that they sometimes find it difficult to talk about personal problems in the consultation room, as a result of which they inadvertently create a barrier for themselves. These Internet services have the ultimate solution they proclaim themselves [24–26].

### **6.4 Diagnostic decision support systems**

Whoever or whatever carries out the diagnostics, both the patient and the healthcare professional have an interest in the unambiguity and completeness of the diagnostic information and that it is only accessible in a legitimate form to those who, in good faith, want to know in an efficient manner taking this information.

### *Modern Times in Point of Care Diagnostics DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.109705*

It is very likely and hoped that the development of the current, rather limited functionality of the electronic file will be further developed into the so-called diagnostic decision support systems, which are supportive to both laymen and professionals. This development will continue for the time being on the basis of existing techniques (e.g., speech recognition, camera recognition, and artificial intelligence) and new (biometric) sensor applications. In the near future, patients will increasingly demand their data to search electronic systems and electronic forums around the world in order to obtain the very best solution for their health problems. Now you might be still—rightly—skeptical: "*So you are worried because you found something on the Internet that resembles what you might have?*"But perhaps the patient of the future will increasingly have an opinion that is similar to the conclusion you as a professional also draw. Certainly, if your own system will soon contain rich, reliable, logically ordered information and explanations, in that case, you may even want to stimulate your patient's digital search [15, 16, 28, 29].
