How long before a UK mobile operator wakes up to the enormous opportunities they have to drive awareness, discovery and access to the mobile internet and makes healthcare (or even just .nhs) content free to browse?

I just wonder how long it will take some of the big healthcare brands to realise the extent of the opportunities they have to stay current and avoid having their lunch taken by the cannibal of cannibals.

If you’re the worlds biggest hearing aid manufacturer by all means keep developing your smart diagnostic apps to drive awareness and new customers:

But why not also add mobile connected device solutions that can add value to your customers lives eg. a smoke detector that can wake someone who is deaf:

If you’re a pharma brand targeting patients with specific needs (eg. epilepsy) by all means keep supporting the development of lifestyle enhancing wellness diary smartphone apps but why not also add mobile connected device solutions that can add value to your customers lives eg. a monitor that can be paired with a patients mobile and act to alert a carer if you’ve fallen or had a seizure:

An interesting comment in the Continua Health Alliance’s Linkedin discussion group:

“I wonder if the self-tracking folk are not the next generation of hypochondriac patients?

To my mind we should focus connected health on situations where it can deliver more independent living and better prognosis for people with real problems, not on helping the self-trackers feel more on top of their hypochondria“

My thoughts:

1) The Healthcare industry needs to change it’s tact: What other industry refers to it’s enthusiasts so negatively?

2) Why aren’t established healthcare providers looking to these innovators as the failing edge? How about keeping them away from pooled resources but letting them win/lose on their own merits?

3) Whilst healthcare providers need to move conservatively there’s nothing stopping other industries from getting involved. Why is it a problem if a mobile brand sells these to customers instead of staying focused on selling ever more unproductive entertainment apps and accessories?

4) Why do so many people underestimate and doubt the potential of what self tracking can achieve?

I really wish everyone tried self tracking for about 20 mins as they’d quickly appreciate that manual data entry isn’t going to be engaging enough to be sustainable. Everyone who is getting anywhere in this space (think of sporting developers like Endomondo or wellness developers like WellDoc) are looking at how they can get data without the need for the individual to have to think about buying/carrying another device or having to think about inputing data.

Fortunately we all willingly now carry about ourselves increasingly powerful pocketable computers and in this there is a rapidly emerging sensory opportunity. In the near future our mobiles will provide us with ever more accurate sensory capabilities and before we even start to think about the benefits of this to those who are impaired can you imagine the capacity these extra acoustic/optical/temperature/touch/taste/smell/conductivity senses will provide us with?

5) Why aren’t we seeing the healthcare industry jumping at the prospect of using cheap and reliable “non-medical” technologies to add value eg the mobile based motion detector that was developed for the security industry but has massive applications as a non invasive home monitor for those who are elderly or disabled and want to live independently in their own homes.

What’s so wrong with patients using the consumer technology they already have and use?

6) Why do so many people think preventative mobile health is a zero sum game invented to sell us more?

Whilst it might start off with a few demanding early adopters as we’ve seen before with patients accessing health information on the internet – this will all soon be mainstream. In the 1950′s they probably said the same about healthclubs – back then it would be beyond the imaginations of most to think what the consequences of nearly 30,000 healthclubs being built across America. I bet some critics at the time said things like “of course this is slippy slope when there are 40 million people exerting themselves in these places we’ll end up bankrupting the healthcare system treating all the tennis elbow”.

In the case of mHealth developers I think it’s more likely that we’re in a process where we are inventing the services that will enable the mobile phone to cannabalise the health club experience. In a decade we’ll probably look back at their achievements and think how quaint it was when people would pay a subscription to have somewhere to go to exercise.

6) What’s wrong with the customer being in charge and adding value?

Why do we have to persist with this group think in which the end result will always be “us” doing more for the patient. Maybe letting go of some of the control will mean “we” do less and the patients do more?

Dr John Bachman MD has shown us what can be achieved when Doctors take this approach but Roy Lilley on page 6 of the Winter Edition of the TSA’s Link Magazine highlights the much wider issues with great style.

Looking at why we see so little innovation in the healthcare industry he highlights the lessons we can take from the transformation of 1950′s grocery stops into today’s giant retail stores with bar codes and self checkout tills:

“All this progress in the grocery and other retail trades. What’s happening? I can tell you. There is a name for the phenomenon. It is not saving money. It is not sacking staff. It has a very specific little phrase that the retail trade is non-too-keen to talk about. It is known as; ‘the customer adding value to the business’. Got that? We are doing the things that retail staff used to do and it’s us adding value to the business. Neat, isn’t it? Because the amazing thing is, customers like it. They like the idea of darting around the store, they like the idea of self-check out because they are in-charge. And, the one thing about change is; it works provided we think we are in charge… …The possibilities are endless. The kit exists, the evidence is overwhelming and the financial pressures the NHS is under means more than ever before, patients can add value to the business. And, do you know what? They’ll like it. They will like being in charge, in the know and in the loop. They can use equipment; they can press buttons and use the telephone, e-mail, text and Twitter. The patients are there already. Where is the NHS?“

Maybe the website just isn’t clear (and you can just use it with only a smartphone) but I can’t see why Nike have limited the use of this device to people who have a PC/Mac with USB drive + broadband internet.

Isn’t it obvious that there’s going to be a lot of early adopters (like the ones who snapped up the $99 Jawbone UP) who might have $149 to spend on a wristband but would expect it to be able to work straight out of the box and expect to have the added value of data input (eg. the meal logging you can do with the UP app) with their smartphone?

With the similarities in these devices (which is no surprise when you realise they’re both powered by FullPower’s X-Motion MEMS based technology) it’ll be interesting to see if Nike’s much larger and more established distribution channels have a corresponding influence. If they don’t I think in future we’ll see a lot more focus from mHealth device makers on the direct/mobile store distribution model that was pioneered by Jawbone.

Jacob Schulman reports in The Verge from the CES exhibition on Verizon’s plans to launch “SureResponse” – a “one-touch panic button”.

It astounds me how slow mobile operators are to learn from deployments of similar devices with their international counterparts.

Whilst I wouldn’t be surprised if US lawyers are much quicker to bring attention to the patient injuries (as we’ve seen in previous deployments of similar devices) I’m amazed that any mobile operator exec could even think of introducing one of these contraptions.

I barely tolerated 24 hours with this much more slender device from LifeComm and I can’t think how heartless you’d have to be to inflict something as big as that on a frail patient.

Especially when there are so many more elegant/non-invasive mobile connected possibilities eg. a nice combination of SeNCit + Firetext + Doro easymobile.

Some interesting perspectives in this very well produced video from the floor of the recent Washington DC mHealth Summit by the team at MobiHealthNews and ListenIn Pictures.

Don’t miss the opportunity to join MobiHealthNews at 2pm ET on the 9th February 2012 for their complimentary webinar “2012 Mobile Health Trends”, which will be looking at the trends that are set to dominate over the next 12 months together with guest Aaron Kaufman, General Manager, Kony Solutions.

Full details.

“telehealth does not mean we will all get smartphones, so can the advocates stop telling us we will have them?“

As someone who’s been using a mobile for nearly two decades years I’m really amazed that so many people still haven’t realised that with the rate of innovation in the mobile market todays smartphone is tomorrows feature phone and that we’ve already actually all got phones with smart features.

To prove the point let’s compare the feature list of my first proper (and very expensive) Smartphone (a Nokia 9100 Communicator) with the EasyPhone (3G Doro PhoneEasy 615) mobile that I set a senior citizen up with recently (interesting this happened to be her first mobile phone). To suggest the Doro isn’t smart underestimates the design that has gone into hiding the complexity from the user – which is nicely illustrated in the specification compare/contrast:

I can’t see it being long before we see abuses of this system emerging and consumers feeling discouraged from sharing health-related information digitally eg. imagine being incarcerated because you followed someone or being screened for disease at an airport because some bureaucrat could see you had followed a disease support group.

Google has been trialling a neat way to securely tie the browser on a PC and your Smartphone using QR Codes to enable more secure password entry processes. The process is this simple:

> Go to https://accounts.google.com/sesame with any PC

> Scan the QR Code you’ll see with your QR Code reading mobile

> You’ll see a Google.com URL pop up, click this and sign in using your Google name and Password

> The screen on the PC automatically logs into your Google Account

The process helps Google Account holders avoid several glaring security issues and I think it would be a very effective way of securing healthcare records. Imagine the money saved by a care provider if it used this instead of expensive smart card deployments:

I always thought this is why Apple hasn’t jumped into the NFC space despite the wide enthusiasm for this technology amongst other mobile device maker brands.

After seeing the simplicity and ease with which all this works (on any basic in market smartphone) I wouldn’t be surprised if those responsible for the bulky/expensive Google Wallet terminals aren’t having a few second thoughts…

Another important victory for common sense and a great example of how communities will continue to dominate brands.