Last night I was at MoMo London where the topic was ‘Trends on mHealth’. Hadley Beeman, founder of LinkedGov and specialist advisor to health organisations, moderated the panel that included Mark Kramer from the University of Applied Sciences in Austria, Barry Flaherty, International Business Development Director for Grow in Qatar and Sophia Salenius who is CEO and Founder of Regpoint.

Here are some insights from the evening…

• mHealth covers a huge variety of apps and services. For example, it can range from preventative health apps, through apps to aid clinician communication to apps that help patients communicate with their doctors.
• The people who need mHealth most (the poor) are often those who aren’t connected or have rudimentary phones.
• Multiple stakeholders and interested parties complicate matters (as with any mobile project).
• Small/simple mHealth implementations can have a huge impact on improving health.
• Security can be an issue where information is held on devices as opposed to being accessed remotely.
• Fragmentation of devices makes inclusive implementation difficult (as with any mobile project).
• Today’s first generation solutions are mainly reminder type apps.
• Pharmaceutical companies have a huge interest in mHealth and hence often fund projects. Their projects can become a source of research on consumer outcomes.
• There are future opportunities for phones linked to sensors and tablet-based solutions.
• It can be difficult to get clinicians to use new systems. Younger clinicians tend to be more receptive.
• The largest costs are on the people-side (e.g. re-training) and not the technology itself.

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• Mobile Health Opportunities

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 9th, 2010 at 1:53 pm and is filed under Mobile, MoMoLondon, MoMo. Both comments and pings are currently closed.