Mobile Technology influencing health Innovation- Mhealth applications

Mobile technology has transformed the way that individuals accomplish everyday tasks like finding directions, paying bills, and communicating with friends. But mobile technology has also changed the way individuals interact with the medical system around the world. With technological advances, health providers are now able remotely to monitor diabetic and heart patients, send email reminders to take medications, and access diagnostic databases through mobile devices. How have these innovations contributed to patient health and enhanced the doctor-patient relationship? What mobile health advances are transforming medical care? How are countries around the world using mobile technology to improve health care delivery and save money?

Mobile health, or mHealth for short, uses mobile technologies for health research and healthcare delivery. It is said that mobile health applications will continue to grow as physicians, patients, and health plans use technology to address changes in healthcare delivery.

The convergence of mobile technology with an evolving healthcare delivery system will continue to drive the mobile health (mHealth) applications market, which will see revenues grow from $230 million in 2010 to $392 million in 2015, according to research from Frost & Sullivan.

According to the report--Analysis of the U.S. Broadband mHealth Applications Market--in the near term, the mobile health app market will benefit from an increasing number of consumers who will purchase smartphones and tablets and download easily accessible and affordable health apps. Furthermore, in a consumer-driven patient-centered healthcare model, patients are encouraged to play a greater role in tracking their health through mobile health apps that monitor vital information such as medication adherence, blood pressure, and glucose readings.

Still, the general consensus is that the market will grow, with payers and providers having the most to gain from the deployment of mobile health apps and the data these apps will manage. "The formidable technical challenges are to link large IT systems--electronic health records (EHRs), health information exchanges (HIEs), and payer databases--with what are now discrete software products, and to generate meaningful analytics," the report said. "The primary marketing challenge will be acquiring the time, talent, and resources required to familiarize consumers with mHealth apps and the concept of self-health to get a user base that justifies expenses."