It might have taken 2 years but it’s very encouraging that healthcare IT professionals are moving on from talking about the meaning of mHealth to talking about the value it offers:
“There is an interconnected world where patients data can go back to a care provider a loved one, a Doctor, etc, so education for the proliferation and adoption of wireless health technologies is a real important thing”
Robert Jarrin, Government Affairs, Qualcomm
“Finally there’s a device that you can keep with you at all times, that has all of your information in it, all of the information that you might need to make educated healthcare decisions and to connect meaningfully into the provider delivery system in the country. Just like we’ve saw in web trends in the 90’s we’ll see point applications evolve to platforms and those platforms need to connect and be interoperable”
“so we look at mobile technology from a couple of standpoints, one patient engagement you know the patients are always carrying their mobile device wherever they go so how can we engage with them better how can we create a loyalty for them with Miami Children’s Hospital?”
Mallesh Murugesan, Miami Children’s Hospital
“Mobile Healthcare allows us to reach out to an individual wherever they are, or to a provider wherever that provider might happen to be so it frees us from the boundaries of only being able to interact with a patient in a professional place based type of setting”
“So that’s really what patients want, patients don’t want me writing notes they want to talk to me they want me to listen to them and mobile technology allows me not only to communicate with them when they’re having big problems and such normally if it’s a big serious problem they’ll come into my office and talk to me although I’m going to enable them to do the majority of their visits outside of the office as well”
“the bottom line is what we’re seeing in medicine is the shift from this idea that the housecall is this antiquated thing that Doctors used to do and I think the beauty of mHealth and the opportunities in mHealth are essentially to be able to take that housecall and make it virtual. Outcomes have to match with the cost of healthcare and so I think HIMSS has been doing a great job of being aligned with that, I think mHIMSS will continue to be an important part of the broader HIMSS as we look to make that traditional house call kind of become this new virtual reality”
“It creates a common platform. Everybody likes devices, Doctors are people first, Patients are people first so it actually creates a talking point creates a bond between the provider and Patient where before there was always that barrier but now it’s something that we both have, we both can talk about apps so it humanises medicine for the Patient and then it’s also something for the provider to engage the Patient one more avenue and then to maybe talk about health apps and all that stuff to really bring them in”
Dr Paul Seville MD, Oregan Health and Science University
How would I answer “What’s the value of mHealth?”
“Mobile – the newest and least understood mass media – is now so widely adopted that we’re approaching the ‘Mobile Moment’ – the point in time when mobile penetration per capita = 100% and mobile becomes the first ever technology to be as widely distributed as mankind. mHealth has played a key part in driving this and we’re now at a point in time where the tech is so mature that it’s created an unprecedented scale of opportunity for success if we take a mobile first approach to building healthcare services”
David Doherty, coFounder, 3G Doctor
How would you answer this question?