mHealth Insight: the blog of 3G Doctor

After taking mHealth Apps native with it’s S Health bundled offering Samsung has now hit it’s stride with record sales of 10m shipments of it’s top of the line Smartphone in the first month.

It’s getting easier to see how medical device, pharma and healthcare experiences will converge to the mobile in this decade just as consumer devices (Calculators, PDAs, Cameras, etc) and services (photo development, birthday cards, payment, etc) did in the last (Nokia) decade…

This Telegraph article neatly sums up the challenges facing the NHS as it looks to make access to health advice available via the internet.

Here are some of my thoughts on the article:

“Mike Farrar, the head of the NHS Confederation, said that contacting doctors online instead of in person would allow GPs to assess health complaints quickly and refer them onwards only if necessary… …Previously Prof Sir Bruce Keogh, the medical director of the NHS, had encouraged surgeries to use new technology such as Skype to communicate with patients. But pilots in 2011 proved unsuccessful… …Labour’s Valerie Vaz said: “The average patient wouldn’t know what to say or what to ask. This idea that you just ring up a doctor and tell them about your symptoms – I thought medicine was based on observation”

I’m surprised it isn’t obvious to everyone that these pilots have proven unsuccessful because they have just been simply trying to use Skype as a direct substitute for conventional in-person consultations. I’m surprised more people aren’t figuring out that this is about as ridiculous as an airline like Ryanair trying to work with an online strategy centred around providing Skype Video calls to sales agents rather than the interactive websites that 99% of customers use to book their flights.

Valerie Vaz obviously has a very good understanding of the challenges that Patients would encounter if NHS GP’s opened their doors to email communications and it surprises me that more people aren’t aware of the challenges that this new process would present eg. very few Patients know how to give a medical history, it’s not clear to Patients what details are/aren’t important, Doctors aren’t trained to provide care via email, etc.

Fortunately there is a clinically validated Patient History Taking Questionnaire technology (the interactive questionnaire tech we use as part of the documented consultations we offer here at 3G Doctor) that can enable this – something that is elegantly explained by Dr John Bachman MD, the Mayo Clinic’s Professor of Primary Care, in this video introducing his Mayo Clinic Proceedings published paper:

““One million more people visit A & E every year, compared to just three years ago,” Mr Hunt told MPs. “The simple fact is, if growth continues at this rate, it will be unsustainable.
“It means that where there are short-term pressures on the system, such as a very cold winter, teething problems with NHS 111, or bank holidays, the system cannot cope as well as it needs to, and the quality of care is affected.” The Health Secretary said that if the services were to be rescued, long-term reforms were needed to address the “underlying causes” of the pressures. Tomorrow he will make a speech setting out changes to ensure family doctors take back responsibility for care when surgeries are closed“

It amazes me that so few politicians appreciate that it’s only through reducing the diverse range of possible touch points (eg. NHS Direct advice line, NHS Choices Website, GP Website, walk in clinics, A&E, etc) and properly provisioning their family Doctors to manage this growing demand for convenient access to medical care.

When you realise that GP’s already provide more than 1.5 million consultations per day it should be obvious that clinically validated online tools would make it possible for them to manage 80% of consultations without the need for in-office consultations and be accessible online 24×7 for less than the amount that’s wasted on the current crop of NHS telephone advice lines where triage isn’t efficiently documented and is led by the least experienced.

This time last week 1400+ delegates landed in Dublin for the European eHealth Week and I was very proud to have been commissioned in January by HIMSS to work with the Healthcare Informatics Society of Ireland to ensure the 2 day mHealth Symposium was a success.

With a conference room full to capacity (300+) the expanded two day event was a massive boost on the one day mHealth Symposium held in 2012 during eHealth Week in Copenhagen (which drew less than delegates). With some great keynote presentations and deals being struck between the exhibiting companies and eHealth Week delegates there was no question that all the hard work paid off.

Here are a summaries of my thoughts and experiences (note: the links will be added as I get time to finalise the posts):

> Event overview

> 3G Doctor
> Alivecor (Video)
> Airwatch (Video)
> Behaviour Change (Video)
> Blueware
> Brain Control (video)
> BT Health
> Comarch
> Continua Health Alliance (Video)
> Croatian Health Insurance Fund
> Dr James Reilly (Video)
> Duodecim Medical Publications
> EIP Active and Healthy Aging
> EMC2 (Video)
> EU SME eHealth Competition
> EU-US eHealth Business Marketplace (Video)
> Finland Plaza (Video)
> Fondazione IRCCS Instituto Nazionale dei Tumori
> GetReal Health (Video)
> HealthFounders (Video)
> HIMSS mHIMSS Roadmap
> Intel
> ISMETT UPMC
> Kaiser Permanente (Video)
> Kings College NHS Hospital (Video)
> Lincor (Video)
> Living Medical History Project (Podcast)
> mHealth Grand Tour (Video)
> mHealth Networking Group Meet up
> Multichannel: Don’t we need more than just mobile?
> Nuance
> O2 Health (Video)
> OncoAssist (Video)
> Qualcomm Life / 2 Net Platform (Video)
> S3 Group
> Sense Observation Systems (Video)
> Slainte Healthcare
> Telcare (Video)
> Ticbiomed
> University Hospital North Norway
> Westfriesgasthuis
> Winvision
> Withings

> Who wasn’t there?
> What others took away from the 2012 mHealth Summit
> My key Take Aways

If you didn’t make it to Dublin or you would like to continue the networking why not join the 4100+ member mHealth group on Linkedin?

The close of eHealth Week 2013 coincided with the launch of the Living Medical History Project at a meeting organised by the Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland at the Royal College of Physicians in Kildare Street and I thought I’d include it in my review as I found it to be a fascinating contrast to all the talk of how communication technology is transforming healthcare following the Nokia decade and a nice link to the history of Medical Practice here in Ireland.

The Living Medical History Project sought to record the memories of a group of medical practitioners who worked in Ireland during the 1940′s and ’50′s. It is obvious that there are incredible lessons to be learnt from the history of how medical practice evolved thanks to advances in our understanding of Health and Disease and the use of Information & Communication Technologies and I personally find this to be a fascinating area of research. Presenters included Dr Ida Milner, Director of the Oral History Network of Ireland.

Can you imagine an Irish Animator could capture these recordings in the way that Brown Bag Films did with the Academy Award nominated short film “Give up all Yer Auld Sins”?

I think that would make for an amazing multimedia medical history project and provide a timeless inspiration to those thinking about a medical career and a great Kickstarter project for an independent animator (I’m in!).

This post is part of a review of the mHealth Symposium at eHealth Week 2013 in Dublin. Click here to read the full review.

On the 21 June 2013 I’ll be sharing some of the mHealth experiences here at 3G Doctor during a keynote talk at the José de Mello Health Group‘s annual Healthcare Conference being held at the Estoril Congress Centre (in the beautiful coastal town of Estoril, 24km from the Portuguese capital Lisbon).

Event partners include Cisco, the world’s leading networking company that is now focused on enabling the Internet of Everything , and PT Prime, the IT Services division of Portugal’s leading fixed-line and Mobile network provider (Portugal Telecom).

The one day program of keynote talks and panels will focus on the use of mobile devices in clinical practice and the provision of health care and the challenges that underlie it.

Confirmed speakers will include:

> Magda Cocco, Partner, Vieira de Almeida & Associados
> Miguel Peres Correia, Dermatology and Infectious Disease Consultant & Chair of the Portuguese Group of Cosmetic Dermatology
> David Doherty, co-Founder, 3G Doctor
> Jorge Juan Fernández García, Director of the E-health and Social Media, Hospital Saint Joan de Deu Barcelona
> Daan Giesen, Innovation Consultant
> Manuel Costa Matos, GP and Medical Consultant
> Cem Yener, Business Development Manager, Cisco Healthcare

Register today

The meeting is designed to contribute to wider awareness of mHealth opportunities and to serve some of the continuous medical education needs of various stakeholders in healthcare including Healthcare Professionals and Administrators with healthcare institutions, government agencies, engineering firms, biomedical device & Pharmaceutical manufacturers, Teachers, Students, Researchers and execs of companies that operate in the technology/telecommunications sector.

Capacity is limited so register here today (Ticket cost is only €150 or €30 for students/Patients)

Don’t know how I managed to miss this great presentation at the Healthcare Informatics New Zealand 2012 Conference (November 8, 2012) by Claudia Pagliari PhD FRCPE, Senior Lecturer in Primary Care at The University of Edinburgh Medical School, as the slide deck even features a couple of 3G Doctor plugs:

My thoughts:

A fascinating video but questioning a flawed quote from the mHealth Alliance that “mHealth will save money” doesn’t do anything but highlight a flawed understanding of the opportunity. While a basic misunderstanding like this may not be all that surprising the reality is that it can be very tricky to challenge accepted wisdom: Most of us want to be cared for in our own homes but it’s not going to ever be cheaper.

During this free EyeforPharma webinar on Monday 22nd May at 1pm GMT (8am EST) Christian Isler, Global Head of Solution and Product Development, Pfizer Integrated Health, will share some insights from the ‘plus pill’ approach that’s being taken by the world’s largest research-based pharmaceutical brand.

“Payers, physicians and patients need more from pharma. Outcomes, not medicines are now the focus and no initiative embodies that more than Pfizer Integrated Health“

Joining the webinar from the stakeholder side will be Mark Wilkinson, CEO of NHS Barnsley’s Clinical Commissioning Group and myself (David Doherty, co-founder of 3G Doctor).

The webinar will take place at 1pm GMT (8am EST) on Wednesday 22nd May – to register for the webinar or to be sent a recording and summary please click here.

If you’d like more info on eyeforpharma webinars or would like to suggest one for your company or a discussion of a topic you find interesting please contact Lanre Ibitoye, Vice President, EyeforPharma on telephone +44 (0)207 375 7592.