mHealth Insight

“In future, I’ll prescribe you an app. One of our whiteboards will drop in and explain what high blood pressure is. The phone will be bluetoothed to the cap of your pills. I’ll nudge you towards a low salt diet. All of these things will all happen in your phone. I see you two or three days a year. The phone sees you everyday.”

Dr Mike Evans

Related: Apple CEO thinks mHealth revenues will dwarf the $Trillion Smartphone market.

On 5th-6th October 2016 at Royal Garden Hotel in London we’ll be giving a talk and leading a roundtable discussion on the “mHealth opportunity for Pharma” at the annual DigiPharm 2016 Conference.

“DigiPharm 2016 is focussing on the vast opportunities that digital and mobile technologies offer in patient engagement and marketing strategies. It is about presenting the right message as part of a well considered, multichannel marketing effort, and how to utilise the different channels to create a valuable experience for the customer. DigiPharm 2016 provides a forum for genuine disruptors (both individuals and organisations) to come and share their experiences of tackling industry stumbling blocks head on. This is more than just another conference. It is fresh, innovative and genuinely engaging for the audience. This coming year’s event will build on previous successes, covering the newest marketing processes, most innovative technologies and first glimpses of the most exciting digital and multichannel marketing case studies. 2016 promises to be the biggest ever. Join us to learn how to future proof your multichannel marketing strategy and utilise digital technologies to their full potential”.

Keynote topics will include:

Digital marketing excellence
Wearable Technologies: Innovation for Pharma
Transforming an Organization to Deliver on the Promise of Customer Experience
Opportunities and innovations in healthcare marketing
Know your market – new approaches in understanding your customer better
Designing the sales force of the future
How to be smarter in pharma marketing through big data
Gaining and maintaining organisational buy in
“Glocal” approach to multichannel marketing and the role of social media
Review of the latest developments in technologies and the potential they offer pharma in gain of attention, add patient value and marketing
Mobile Patient Engagement Strategy
Navigating the mobile experience: empowering innovation by designing a user-centric experience
Digital marketing: from a traditional department to a multichannel approach (focus on customers)

Confirmed speakers include:

Nadeem Ashraf, Digital Lead for Medical Affairs & PRA, Eli Lilly
Mike Bellis, Customer Experience Lead, Pfizer
Davide Bottalico, Head of Digital, Takeda
Stephanie Bova, Head of EUCAN, Takeda Digital Accelerator, Takeda
Julien Dagher, Europe Marketing Director Hematology, Novartis Oncology
Tughan Demirbilek, Strategy & Operations Director, Bristol-Myers Squibb
David Doherty, coFounder, 3G Doctor
Herve Dumas, Patient care solution lead, UCB
Federico Fanti, Head of multichannel transformation, Leo Pharma
Jessica Federer, Head of Digital Development, Bayer
Kai Gait, Senior Global Digital Director, GSK
Javier Garcia, Marketing Director, Teva
Olivier Gryson, Head of Digital, Servier
Thibaud Guymard, Head of eHealth Services, MSD / Merck & Co
Kasia Hein-Peters, VP, Head of Marketing for Dengue Vaccine, Sanofi Pasteur
Susanne Kellenaers, Director Multichannel Management, Daiichi Sankyo
Olli Mitchell, Marketing Director UK & Ireland, Abbott
Thierry Picard, Chief Digital Officer, Pierre Fabre
Sarmad Salim, Director, eCommerce, Mobile and Web Solutions, Sanofi
Denise Silber, Digital health keynote/strategist & Founder, Doctors 2.0 & You
Timothy White, Head of customer experience, Teva EUv

Delegates attending include senior executives from the following global companies:

A+Be, Abbott Laboratories, AbbVie, Actelion, Advanced Health Media, Aegerion Pharmaceuticals, Allergan Limited, Amgen, Astellas Pharma, AstraZeneca, Atos Consulting, Biogen Idec, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol Myers Squibb, CSBJ Journal, Daiichi Sankyo Europe, DataArt, DMI, EMD Serono Inc, EUCOPE, European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations, EY, Ferring Pharmaceuticals, F Hoffman-La Roche Ltd, GSK, Havas Lynx, ICA, IMS Health, Intercept Pharma, Ipsen, Laboratoire HRA PHARMA, LEO Pharma, Lilly, McKesson, Meda Pharmaceuticals, Medical News Today, Medix Publishers, Merck, MSD, Mundipharma Research, NIHR Clinical Research Network, Novartis, Novo Nordisk, Otsuka Pharmaceutical, Pfizer, Pharmafield, Pharma Marketing News, Pharmahorum, PharmaVoice, Pope Woodhead & Associates Ltd, Porzio Bromberg and Newman PC, PT Kalbe Farma Tbk, PwC, Qordata, Roche, Sandoz, Sanofi, Sanofi Pasteur, Servier, Stevanato Group, Studio1896, Takeda, Takeda Digital Accelerator, Teva Pharmaceuticals, Transparency International UK, UCB Pharma and Vifor Pharma.

Click here to register to attend (get in touch if you’d like a discount code) and if you or one of your clients have a story you would like to share at this international event then please call Adeline Lahore on +44 (0)20 7092 1173 or email at alahore@healthnetworkcommunications.com

Related: Click here to check out a comprehensive list of mHealth events.

mHealth Insights

The executives at Medical Device companies who have sat on their hands doing nothing to connect their devices or create interactive experiences will be cheerleading these results but we shouldn’t let them as this is exactly the type of discrediting that they need to keep getting away with failing Patients, raising the sale prices of their decrepit tech and maintaining barriers to market for new entrants who are taking innovative connected approaches: The failure to use data effectively doesn’t mean the data doesn’t have value.

Imagine what the BornMobile would think/say if Dr Martin R Cowie tried to explain the design of this study to them:

> What do you mean the Patients have no idea if the live saving medical device you have implanted in their body is switched on/off, is faulty, has a flat battery, has the latest patched software installed, etc?

> Why have you not even tried to connect the Patients in your race to get data from the devices?

> Why is your monitoring focused on these devices and not on your Patients?

> Why do you make these patients travel and do things every week when I can just press my phone and an Uber arrives?

> I’m surprised the Patients in your connected group didn’t have worse outcomes with all the extra unnecessary hassles your made them undertake as part of your study.

> Did this study pass your mother test eg. is this how you would care for a Patient who was also your Mother?

“we could find no evidence of additional benefit from remote monitoring,” Dr Martin R Cowie (Imperial College London, Royal Brompton Hospital, UK) told conference attendees”

If you are a clinician or researcher who is unable to find benefits from remote monitoring find someone to collaborate with who can. There are a lot of very senior people in organisations like the NHS who are bluffing about Big Data etc so you’ll probably need to kick some tyres before you’ll find someone good but check out the introductions to the mHealth group as there are some really smart professionals to be found there and via Linkedin you can check out their backgrounds/connections/work experiencee.

“researchers found that remote monitoring did not reduce mortality or the number of cardiovascular hospitalizations compared with usual care”

I wonder why these researchers think every car manufacturer is following Tesla’s lead and embedding connectivity into their vehicles to deliver a modern ownership experience? Imagine how Elon Musk would be mocked if he said they were going to remove the embedded connectivity in Tesla cars because they made no difference to breakdown and crash rates and didn’t save Tesla engineers any time or money?

“Patients (mean age 70 years) had one of three types of CIEDs equipped for remote monitoring: a cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) device with pacemaker, a CRT device with defibrillator function, or an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD)… …Researchers analyzed automatically downloaded weekly data from patient devices and advised the patients about medication, lifestyle, the need for clinic visits, or other recommendations. Usual-care patients did not have automatic downloads but had usual remote monitoring every 3 to 6 months plus usual care for heart failure”

Were these Researchers also the Doctors who were caring for the Patient or do we have unfamiliar ‘researchers’ who have little/no medical training with clipboards as the value of these interactions will be very different.

Imagine the laughing stock if a car manufacturer tried to conduct research that was designed like this and presented it at a big auto industry meeting: a control group had to go to the garage receptionist every week to do a data dump and get some boiler plate advice about their driving style and the other group had to drive around in their car with all the dashboard lights/alerts disabled and turn up every 3/6 months.

“70% of the patients had additional actions taken by looking at the remote data”

Amazing that so little is made of this finding in the article. This sounds just like the type of data you might like to compare and contrast the devices that are being bought from different manufacturers at widely varying retail prices. This data seems like exactly the type of data needed to calculate value for money for the NHS.

Perhaps these Heart Failure researchers aren’t aware of the calls for connectivity to be embedded in medical devices by organisations like the International Diabetes Federation (millions of Patients with diabetes are already self managing medical devices and are benefiting from remote monitoring)? What do you think?

A low cost eye test developed at the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology offers hope of detecting Parkinson’s disease before symptoms develop.

I’ve been learning so much and having some very interesting experiences since I started carrying an Eye and Retinal Imaging System (by attaching a D-Eye device to my iPhone) and it’s stunning to think of the potential for this technology to be used in Primary Care Screening programmes like you can already see happening across the world with community screening initiatives for AF with the Alivecor ECG.

Can you imagine the potential if big charities investing in Parkinsons research (like the Michael J Fox foundation, Parkinsons UK, etc) worked with an innovative company like D Eye to introduce screening programs and then recruit Citizens and Patients to participate in Mobile First Clinical Trials?

Related Posts:

The Smartphone Physical

mHealth Insights from the American Academy of Ophthalmology Annual Meeting

This BBC News article reporting on the BMA’s recent report on “Safe working in general practice” shows how complex it is when we think the only thing a GP can do is provide timed office visit appointments to their Patients:

mHealth Insights

As a rule of thumb I find that if in General Practice you need to resort to using buzzword terms to get a point across (eg. “controlling GP workload through a locality hub model“) the concept you’re promoting is probably too complicated or you don’t yet actually understand what you’re trying to do. If you struggle with this Dr Wendy Sue Swanson’s TedX talk about using the tools of our time should be of help because very often the tools that we need to use with Patients don’t need to be bought in multi-year multi-£billion tenders because they’re already in our pockets.

It should be obvious that attempts to measure the work of a GP by how long they spend with a Patient is a losing battle when you realise there are NHS GPs writing in national newspapers that they spend much of their day consulting with Patients who they think are wasting their time.

The NHS makes no sense if you think the product GPs make is office appointments so wouldn’t it be better if the BMA stopped calling for more of the same and backed efforts by NHS GPs who have moved beyond the office visit model?

Making champions of smart GPs like Dr Rupert Bankart who are sharing evidence on new models that work for GPs and are popular with Patients would be a great start.

Related Post: Does John need your Time or Attention?

Do Patients need the TIME or Attention of their GP? https://t.co/rfPj8pBnz1

— mHealth Insight (@mHealthInsight) August 29, 2016

Related posts:

Road Safety is a key feature of Samsung’s new Galaxy J3

Google launches Android One accessible smartphones in India without even a nod to mHealth

On Saturday the 24th September 2016 at University College Cork the annual Street Medicine Symposium will meet to share information and best practice on Health and Homelessness. The meeting is being organised by the Adult Homeless Integrated Service, HSE South in partnership with the Department of General Practice and GP Vocational Training Scheme, UCC and The Partnership for Health Equity.

There will be plenty of opportunities to interact and connect with ‘Street Medicine’ colleagues from around Ireland and further afield, confirmed speakers include:

Ella Arensman, Director of Research, National Suicide Research Foundation
Fiona Barry, Senior Service Manager, Crosscare
Dr Dana Beale, Pathfinder Practice
Martina Bergin, Dublin Simon
Tim Bingham, HSE Addiction Services
Colin Bradley, Professor of General Practice, UCC
Des Cahill, Lord Mayor of Cork
Eleanor Cape, NDCGP
Sinead Carey, Project Manager, Novas Initiatives
Clíona Ní Cheallaigh, Locum Consultant General Medicine, St. James Hospital
Eibhlin Ni Choileain, Camden Health Improvement Practice
Aoibheann Ni Chonfhaola, St Luke’s Hospital
Elaine Conlon, Nurse, Adult Homeless Integrated Team
Simon Coveney, Minister for Housing
Denise Cremin, Cork Simon
Derek Dempsey, Counselling coordinator, Dublin Simon Community
John Dermody, UISCE
Mary Dillon, Novas
David Doherty, coFounder, 3G Doctor
Deirdre Dowdall, HSE Addiction Services
Paul Dunbar, Crosscare
Maura Duggan, Adult Homeless Integrated Team
Claire Dunne, Counselling Psychologist, UCC
Sarah Farrel, Dublin Simon
Mary Fleming, Clinical Lead, Dublin Simon
Graham Gill-Emerson, Addiction Counsellor, Cork Simon
Sinead Grogan, DePaul Charity
Kieran Harkin, GP, Safetynet
Andrew Hudson, Royal College of Surgeons Ireland
Jo-Hanna Ivers, Dublin Region Homeless Executive
Helen Keeling, CAMHS
Dr James Kinahan, Cork University Hospital
Joe Kirby, Cork Local Drug and Alcohol Task Force
Jim Lane, Adult Homeless Integrated Team
Jack Lambert, Mater, Rotunda and UCD
Sharon Lambert, Dept of Psychology, UCC
Stephanie Lordan, Dublin Simon Community
John McCarthy, Adult Homeless Integrated Team
Geoff McCombe, UCD
Peter McCourt, University of Cambridge
Hannah McHugh, UISCE
Regina McQuillan, St Francis Hospice
Stephen Moore, Practice Manager, Luther Street Medical Centre
Blaire Mulvey, GP, South East GP Training Scheme
Austin O’Carroll, Safetynet
David O’Connell, HSE Addiction Services
Patrick O’Donnell, GP, University of Limerick GEMS
Anton Queen, University of Glasgow
Ming Rawat, North Dublin City GP Training
Jess Sears, DePaul Charity
Angie Skuce, Capuchin Day Centre
Amanda Stafford, Emergency Derpt, Royal Perth Hospital
Kashia Stubba, Cork Simon Community

My talk will discuss the opportunities to take a Mobile First approach to help meet the complex challenges of homelessness. It will only be a short session but will introduce the 1 hour online CPD accredited HISI course I’ll be launching at the event titled “mHealth: Helping meet the challenges of Homelessness”.

Key points I’ll be looking to introduce/cover include:

> Why we should think ‘Mobile First’ when designing services to serve homeless populations.
> How mobile can help encourage inclusion and ensure homeless populations stay connected and aren’t left behind.
> How Mobile connectivity can help bridge language barriers and create independence and wealth.
> Mobile Communities and Addiction Treatment programs.
> The opportunity Mobile provides us with to serve immigrant Patients.
> The Mobile opportunities for Mobile Fundraising and Awareness.
> mHealth success stories from around the world.

If you have any ideas or suggestions for my please share them in the comments below and I’ll try to add them.

To register for the meeting click here (this event is CPD accredited).

Unfortunately the call for papers closed in July but if you would like to get involved in the event with sponsorship or a booth etc you can contact the organising team on streetmedicinesymposium2016@ucc.ie

*** UPDATE 23 August 2016: A background reading list ***

Some great shares by Claudia Pagliari kick off a recommended reading list:

CNET: Homeless, not phoneless: The app saving society’s forgotten tech users If you became homeless, would you keep your smartphone? One app offers life-saving guidance, in the recognition that someone might not have a bed but likely still has a phone.

U.S. Minority Homeless Youth’s Access to and Use of Mobile Phones: Implications for mHealth Intervention Design.

Journal of Substance Abuse: Factors Associated With Patterns of Mobile Technology Use Among Persons Who Inject Drugs

Journal of Health Communications: Perceptions, Attitudes, and Experience Regarding mHealth Among Homeless Persons in New York City Shelters.

UPDATE 24 August 2016: HomelessSMS is interesting SMS based service in development in the Netherlands and UK that was shared by Keith Grimes over in the Linkedin mHealth group:

Thanks to a nurse colleague (who doesn’t yet have a social media presence!) for this link: STAT: 4 trends in health care that were pioneered in homeless medicine:

“To make health care more accessible and higher quality, insurers and providers are experimenting with a number of new approaches — from storing patient information in the cloud to opening clinics inside of grocery stores.

Close cousins to many of these tactics, however, were implemented even earlier in the homeless health care system. Homeless patients’ unique characteristics — they frequently have multiple chronic conditions, they move around often — overlap with some of the pressures driving medicine’s evolving care model today. And the cost and time constraints of the homeless revealed the weakness of the health care system before others saw it”

UPDATE 1 September 2016: Handup is interesting app that helps charities to raise funds for homeless individuals online:

UPDATE 1 September 2016: OurCalling is a non-profit based in Dallas USA that have developed an app that provides an aiding tasks that enables volunteers to lend their ‘knowledge not money’ to  homeless individuals in a quick and easy way.

Key features of the app include an up to date database of service providers for the poor searchable on a map or by distance from your location (eg. shelters, clinics, food, rehab, etc), calendar listings of volunteer opportunities, etc. One feature I think looks very helpful is how it enables the volunteer network to identify locations for outreach teams to visit: 

A simi

 

It’s quite interesting to see that StreetLink are using their Twitter account to try and engage with Pokemon game players to help with this awareness. I wonder how useful this has been or if it’s just intended to get some helpful publicity (Pokemon has been a huge hit with young people in the UK):

• Practically everyone has a smartphone today in affluent countries (and +2.6 Billion have a second mobile) and we shouldn’t be surprised to see homeless people in European cities with these devices (a Crisis report suggests that the average age of death for homeless in London is just 47 years).
• Old smartphones are often donated to friends/family as they’re not worth a lot of money
• Charities that work with the homeless often give them mobile phones to help them stay connected to services/communities. Increasingly Healthcare providers are doing this to help Patients with chronic conditions and the opportunity is obvious when you appreciate that the cost of treating an uncomplicated case of TB can range from £2,000-£50,000 and the failure to complete a course of treatment makes the problem much worse.
• You cannot live in a smartphone (yes even the latest most expensive one sold by Apple!)
• Selling your smartphone will be one of the last things someone who has become homeless will do as second hand devices aren’t worth that much money (and certainly not enough to cover a deposit/rent payment) and they offer a lifeline for improving your situation (via your mobile friends and prospective employers can contact you, you can find a hostel, get advice, etc).
• Maintaining a Smartphone and your online social networks can be very inexpensive (eg. many public areas and libraries now provide free plugs and WiFi)
• A mobile can be an invaluable life line for someone sleeping rough and it also enables them to provide an invaluable community service eg. reporting crimes and emergencies via 999/112.
• We need to be less judgemental about how deserving homeless people are as otherwise we just exacerbate the scenario we see today in affluent areas of cities where professional beggars pretend to be homeless by dressing up as caricatures.

I learnt about Dr Susan Partovi from this fascinating STATNews profile:

The article gives you a feel of the Street Medicine speciality that Dr Partovi is pioneering and it makes it easy to think of the opportunity for Healthcare Professionals to utilise mHealth tools as they care for Patients outside of the conventional clinic environment.

Great to see that Dr Partovi is also using her camera phone to document the care that her organisation is providing. Even in low resource settings the low cost smartphone enables smart passionate medics to help build high quality educational resources for other medics:

Learn more about and find ways to support Dr Susan Partovi’s work by clicking here.

UPDATE 1 September 2016: A colleague sent me the link to The Street Medicine Institute:

At their annual International Street Medicine Symposium being held in Geneva from the 19th to 22nd of October 2016 there’s not yet any mHealth content. I’ve emailed the Chair (Patrick J. Perri, MD) to see if they’d be interested in adding some or perhaps sharing the course I’m developing here with their delegates:

UPDATE 18 September 2016: The city of San Francisco provides a “SF311 Mobile” service that provides city government services on your mobile enabling reporting of graffiti, street & sidewalk repair, garbage, housing & residential building requests, abandoned vehicles, color curb requests, water / sewer issues, etc.

It’s quite clear it’s being used regularly by citizens to report homeless citizens as a nuisance and it has me wondering if services like this are positive or negative eg. are they helping homeless populations or further driving them away from affluent ‘desirable’ areas into ghettos through the threat of criminalisation?

UPDATE 23 September 2016: I’ve uploaded a draft of the slide deck I’ll be using to Slideshare. Let me know if there’s anything  you think I should add/clarify…