That apple a day may still be valuable, but so is our connected future.

Yesterday, The Dallas Morning News took a closer look at how AT&T and other high-tech companies are working to create innovative, connected devices for the medical community to better track patient health.

There are many players involved, from patients to insurers to hospitals, but doctors are confident that with mobile devices automatically transmitting information, they are much more likely to catch important indicators in a timely fashion.

These interceptions are found to be considerably helpful in preventing more serious situations.

Such early interventions could prevent many of the acute attacks that gradually transform a functional person into an invalid. They may also help save society from financing costly emergency room visits and other intensive treatments.

AT&T’s Bob Miller is quoted in the article acknowledging that these are not new technologies, but that they are being used in new ways—connecting good, old-fashioned thermometers, scales and blood-pressure cuffs to care providers via the Internet. With the success seen with early efforts, such as the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ treating 35,000 patients via connected medicine, experts like Ron Banister, an assistant professor of anesthesiology at Texas Tech, predict increasingly commonplace telehealth use in the next two to three years.

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