“Businesses can apply for a share of £450,000 in SBRI contracts to develop mobile health services to transform the lives of diabetics. The Scottish Government and Scottish Diabetes Group, working in association with Scottish Enterprise, Innovate UK and NHS Scotland, are seeking business projects that could improve the lives of patients and save costs through mobile health applications… …The Scottish Diabetes Group is looking for accessible and safe solutions targeted at users of smartphones, tablets and laptops. Proposals would be co-designed by users, demonstrate cost savings for NHS Scotland and have the potential to transform the lives of diabetics. This competition will run in 2 phases. In the first phase, up to 5 projects will win contracts for feasibility studies. Up to 2 projects will be awarded contracts for further development, depending on the outcome of the feasibility studies”
mHealth Insights
While I welcome UK government interest in supporting mHealth innovation this new effort follows the recent failure of another expensive 4 year long government led mHealth project so I think it’s worth making it very clear that I think the focus of this effort is a complete waste of resources:
> We don’t have a problem with the availability of apps we have a fundamental problem with their integration into the work flow of Clinicians. 99% of the data collected when expensive test strips are placed into glucometers by NHS Patients is never collected never mind used. Diabetics don’t need more ideas or another call for more apps to be built, they need more support for them to use the apps that have been built. It’s time for the UK government to back calls by the International Diabetes Federation to embed connectivity into glucometers and to make plans for how they will stop wasting money paying for data that isn’t collected.
> I hope an entrepreneur proves me wrong but I can only see the application process involved in a £30,000 6 month feasibility study appealing to the type of businesses that don’t really have what it takes to understand the challenges facing diabetics and the opportunity for mHealth innovation to address these eg. it’s really not hard in 2015 to find indredibly determined innovative carers who are ALREADY doing things that you could support if you have money to give away.
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