Introduction – Health Crisis Looming?
Macro and socio economical forces are driving the expenditures per capita steadily higher and higher and are shaping the health industry. OECD Health Statistics for 2013 (OECD, 2013) show that the annual average growth rate per capita for health expenditures has come down on average (OECD, 2013; see Figure 1) but is still growing. |
| Figure 1: Annual average growth rate in per capita health expenditures (OECD, 2013, p. 155) |
The OECD average for health expenditure per capita and year is over 3'000 USD (OECD, 2013; see Figure 2).
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| Figure 2: Health expenditure per capita, 2011 (OECD, 2013, p. 155) |
Advances in medicine have increased the life expectancy over that last 40 years by ten years on average (OECD, 2013; see Figure 3).
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| Figure 3: Life expectancy at birth, 1970 and 2011 (OECD, 2013, p. 25) |
As more deceases can be treated or even cured, modern time lifestyle deceases like obesity are increasing health expenditures steadily and continuously (Bouysen, 2010, see Figure 4).
 |
| Figure 4: The Casual Loop of Rising Health Costs (Bouysen, 2010) |
As a result the health spending per capita is increasing not linearly but exponentially as the life expectancy increases (OECD, 2013; see Figure 5).
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| Figure 5: Life expectancy at birth and health spending per capita, 2011 (OECD, 2013, p. 25) |
This increased demand is not met with increased supply of medical personal. As OECD statistics show (OECD, 2013) the number of practicing nurses per population has been decreasing in the first decade of this millennium by more than 1.5% on average (see Figure 6).
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| Figure 6: Practicing nurses per 1'000 population, 2011 and change 2000 and 2011 (OECD, 2013, p. 77) |
All these factors are not only increasing the health costs but if not addressed can result in a health system that is very expensive and has not enough capacity to take care of all the people needing medical help. A health crisis is the making.
How can technology - especially mobile technology - help in avoiding this looming future for patients needing medical help and health care services? This article will provide some of these answers.
Healthcare is an enormous industry that includes homogenous and heterogenous areas of inquiry. The advent of mobile technology, on the other hand, is also something that needs to be watched closely. The combination of these two areas of human achievement has brought with us some radical changes we now witness in our everyday life.
The birth of mobile healthcare promises us with more accessible, cost-effective and individual-oriented care. The general areas of mobile health industry (alternatively known as mHealth) can be grossly devided into Wearables and Informationalized Hospitals.
Wearables target people who are not in perfect health and yet not terminally ill. Wearables monitor blood glucose level, heart rate, blood pressures, etc. When used in combination with smart phones, and/or computers (with pre-installed apps), consumers get professional health advice on when and what they should do to keep health (One brand, Sotera Wireless, goes even further to monitor the vital signs of patients under intensive care). Generally speaking, these methods are preventative in nature. And therefore save costs. Companies that specialize in the production of wearables includes, Nike, Fitbit, Apple, Jawbone, and Sotera Wireless.
Informationalised Hospitals are as commonly seen as the wearables medical devices. This is more complicated than wearables in the sense that it involves more stakeholders. Furthermore, complicated technology that deals with data processing (and subsequently Big Data/decision support systems/business intelligence), in addition to cloud computing, computer programming, and wireless communication (which are already used in wearables) is required. Companies that engaged in this area of business include, Athenahealth, Qualcomm Life.
Greater challenge brings greater benefits. Informationalised Hospitals are more connected than the traditional hospitals. Pharmacists, family members, home nurse, physician, and patients are connected through smart phones/tablets on an integrated online platform (such as Canvas/Aims at Cityu). The service strives to ensure that patients receive continuous care after they are discharged from hospitals. This will be especially helpful to people with chronic conditions that need to on habitual medication.
There are other services that combine mobile and health. One particular digital platform promises to collect the health record of patients and then match them with healthcare professionals with specializations. The platform then charges a fee from the hospitals for successful matching.
Another way that values are generated are through the knowledge accumulated in the decision support systems, so called Big Data. Research agencies could utilise information for research on epidemic control. Practing doctors could gain insights on the cause of an illnesses and the best treatment plans.
The Mobile health has a lot of opportunities now and will increase more in the future. According to the PwC and GSMA report (PwC & GSMA, 2012) global mHealth revenues will increase nearly six-fold by 2017, with monitoring services and applications representing 65% of the market. Based on this finding, mHealth has the potential to make a great impact on the healthcare industry, yet organisations are still uncertain on how to capitalist on the technology.
The regions and market segments for mHealth industry are various and different and the impact of mobile technology on the health service industry will vary.
Also due to the various national health regulation and approving entities it is not easy to transfer successful products and offering from one country to another.
Smartphone applications (needed to regulatory approval) are according to Jahns (2010) the killer applications for moving into mHealth.
As mentioned in the introduction various socio and macro economical forces are impacting mHealth:
The emerging economics developing very fast in the last few years, and it will be a great market for mHealth industry. In the emerging markets surveyed, patient awareness and expectations of mHealth are, on average, far higher than in developed countries (see Figure 10 and Figure 11)
More importantly, far more patients are already using mHealth. 59% of emerging-market patients use at least one mHealth application or service, compared with 35% in the developed world, and among those who do not, emerging-market residents are more interested in starting.
New approaches are also being used for delivery health services in more cost effective way.
In Mexico, for example, a telephone-based health care advice and triage service is available to more than one million subscribers and their families for $5 a month, paid through phone bills.
In India, an entrepreneur has proved that high-quality, no-frills maternity care can be provided for one-fifth of the price charged by the country’s other private providers.
In New York City, the remote monitoring of chronically ill elderly patients has reduced their rate of hospital admissions by about 40 percent (McKinsey report).
As an emerging economic country, China will be a large market for mHealth industry. After team member Connie Liu graduated from my college in US, she went back to China in 2012, and she could feel the developing shift away form just looking at the economic growth. People started to care more about their health more than before and also for their next generation. From organic food to mobile health equipment, people increase their awareness for all the things good for health.
However, other than the great opportunities, this industry also have some threats. The most important one is the products, and products need innovation. Unfortunately, health care can be an isolated and local activity also due to local regulation: innovations are not widely known across different systems or beyond sector boundaries. Merely identifying and promoting innovations isn’t enough, however—leaders need to understand whether, and how, the lessons of innovators can be replicated elsewhere.
Cardionet – A new mHealth Player
Data in 2009 shows that there are over 4 million Americans having cardiac arrhythmia, and 78 million patient need to keep monitoring their heart rate at hospital according the same data. This at a cost of nearly 26'500 USD per person. Cardionet's Mobile Cardiac Outpatient TelemetryTM ("MCOT™") can do the same at a fraction of the costs of only 1'300 USD, i.e. at about 5%!
The traditional way for monitoring the heart rate are Holter Monitor, Event Monitor or In-Hospital cardiac telemetry. None of them are wireless, and the disadvantages include short duration of measurement, delay in reporting, symptoms driven measurement limitation in recording, need of manual intervention and transmission. The resulting diagnostic yield (% where the heart measurements can be used to diagnose a heart condition) is 7% and 15% for Holter Monitor and Event Monitor respectively.
Cardionet launched MOCT that could be used in diagnosis and the treatment of arrhythmias. It offers ambulatory, continuous, real-time outpatient management solutions. What surprises us more is the diagnostic yield of more than 65%, i.e. it is not only cheaper but also more effective. Cardionet saw the possibilities mobile technology offered as one of the early ones in 1999 and spend a lot of effort to get it approved by the U.S. FDA in 2003. MOCT is a revolution in monitoring devices and profits from the first move advantage in developing it and getting FDA approval. Mobile technology is the key element to realize the long-distance monitoring.
Currently, Cardionet has a positive strong growth trend, and they are implementing the following strategy: To solidify company’s position as the leading provider of outpatient cardiac monitoring services, expand presence in the research services market and leverage monitoring platform into new markets.
Many challenges and questions remains and provide new opportunities for further innovation.
Many socio-ethical impacts still need to be discussed.
More questions than answers but one thing is sure, mHealth is here to stay and to evolve further. More offsprings of this marriage can be seen along the digital path (see Figure 16).
New technology like cloud computing and big data analytics and new players move into the health services market. For example IBM is working together with a health care company McCale to how see IBM’s technology could help doctors make better use of clinical data. (Orcutt, 2015).
What do you think the future for mHealth will bring?
Where do you see the opportunities, challenges and threats?
Share your thoughts and let's start a discussion.
Bouysen, A. (2013), Why healthcare costs are hijacking childhood, http://afterthemillennials.com/2013/02/28/why-healthcare-costs-are-hijacking-childhood/. Retrieved 16 April 2015.
Cardionet, Concept = Win, Strategy = Epic Fail. (2010, August 31). Retrieved from http://singularityhub.com/2010/08/31/cardionet-concept-win-strategy-epic-fail/
CardioNet-A case study smart services leadership summit.(2008) Retrieved from http://wenku.baidu.com/view/b1caab4c767f5acfa1c7cdda.html
CardioNet Annual report 2015. Retrieved from
http://quote.morningstar.com/stock-filing/Annual-Report/2014/12/31/t.aspx?t=XNAS:BEAT&ft=10-K&d=05177547e5ad07391dd53f91a4b06d51
Economist Intelligence Unite (2012) Emerging mHealth: Paths for growth. Retrieved from www.pwc.com/mhealth.
Fitbit website. Retrieved from http://www.fitbit.com/cn on 17th of April, 2015.
Guangzheng hangseng investment report on Bio telemptry.(2013, August 6). Retrieved from
http://dln.gzs.com.cn/mail/201307/Attachment/8696ff7e-7cb3-464d-b7d5-7702d95c6ab7.pdf
Jahns, R-G. (2010), 500m people will be using healthcare mobile applications in 2015.
Jawbone website. Retrieved from https://jawbone.com/ on 17th of April, 2015.
Mechael, Patricia; Kwan, Ada; and Kern, Dayle. Chapter 9: Mobile Health. in Global Mobile: Applications and Innovations for Worldwide Mobile Ecosystem. by Bruck, Peter A. & Rao, M. (eds.) New Jersey: USA, Information Today, Inc.
Mobile Cardiac Outpatient Telemetry (MCOT) - Cardiac Telemetry | CardioNet Event Monitors. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.cardionet.com/
The Impact of Mobile Technology on Health Care
To understand mobile health industry, we first need to understand what is meant by 'mobile health'. According to World Health Organization (WHO), mHealth is "the medical and public health practice supported by mobile devices such as mobile phones, tablets, patients monitoring devices, personal digital assistant, and other wireless devices." (Bruck & Rao, 2013) For the purpose of this research, we aim to examine mobile health industry in the context of north America, where a group of 20 mHealth companies, most of which were founded around 2000, are the focus of our investigation.Healthcare is an enormous industry that includes homogenous and heterogenous areas of inquiry. The advent of mobile technology, on the other hand, is also something that needs to be watched closely. The combination of these two areas of human achievement has brought with us some radical changes we now witness in our everyday life.
 |
| Figure 7: Players moving into mobile health industry (Source: own graphic) |
The birth of mobile healthcare promises us with more accessible, cost-effective and individual-oriented care. The general areas of mobile health industry (alternatively known as mHealth) can be grossly devided into Wearables and Informationalized Hospitals.
Wearables target people who are not in perfect health and yet not terminally ill. Wearables monitor blood glucose level, heart rate, blood pressures, etc. When used in combination with smart phones, and/or computers (with pre-installed apps), consumers get professional health advice on when and what they should do to keep health (One brand, Sotera Wireless, goes even further to monitor the vital signs of patients under intensive care). Generally speaking, these methods are preventative in nature. And therefore save costs. Companies that specialize in the production of wearables includes, Nike, Fitbit, Apple, Jawbone, and Sotera Wireless.
Informationalised Hospitals are as commonly seen as the wearables medical devices. This is more complicated than wearables in the sense that it involves more stakeholders. Furthermore, complicated technology that deals with data processing (and subsequently Big Data/decision support systems/business intelligence), in addition to cloud computing, computer programming, and wireless communication (which are already used in wearables) is required. Companies that engaged in this area of business include, Athenahealth, Qualcomm Life.
Greater challenge brings greater benefits. Informationalised Hospitals are more connected than the traditional hospitals. Pharmacists, family members, home nurse, physician, and patients are connected through smart phones/tablets on an integrated online platform (such as Canvas/Aims at Cityu). The service strives to ensure that patients receive continuous care after they are discharged from hospitals. This will be especially helpful to people with chronic conditions that need to on habitual medication.
There are other services that combine mobile and health. One particular digital platform promises to collect the health record of patients and then match them with healthcare professionals with specializations. The platform then charges a fee from the hospitals for successful matching.
Another way that values are generated are through the knowledge accumulated in the decision support systems, so called Big Data. Research agencies could utilise information for research on epidemic control. Practing doctors could gain insights on the cause of an illnesses and the best treatment plans.
 |
| Figure 8: Picture adapted from Gartner, "Hype Cycle of Telemedicine" on 15th of April, 2015 |
Mobile Health Industry (mHealth) Analysis
The Mobile health has a lot of opportunities now and will increase more in the future. According to the PwC and GSMA report (PwC & GSMA, 2012) global mHealth revenues will increase nearly six-fold by 2017, with monitoring services and applications representing 65% of the market. Based on this finding, mHealth has the potential to make a great impact on the healthcare industry, yet organisations are still uncertain on how to capitalist on the technology.
The regions and market segments for mHealth industry are various and different and the impact of mobile technology on the health service industry will vary.
Also due to the various national health regulation and approving entities it is not easy to transfer successful products and offering from one country to another.
Smartphone applications (needed to regulatory approval) are according to Jahns (2010) the killer applications for moving into mHealth.
 |
| Figure 9: mHealth market 2015 (Jahns, 2010) |
As mentioned in the introduction various socio and macro economical forces are impacting mHealth:
Aging population
Aging populations and chronic illness are driving regulatory reform. Public sector healthcare is seeking better access and quality, and it's looking to the private sector for innovation and efficiency. mHealth improves access and quality, and offers dramatic innovation and cost reduction.Foundations already in place
The foundations of industrialization of healthcare are already in place — electronic medical records, remote monitoring and communications. ‘Care anywhere’ is already emerging. The platform for mHealth is set.Personalization
Healthcare, like other industries, is getting personal. mHealth can offer personal toolkits for predictive, participatory and preventative care.The emerging economics developing very fast in the last few years, and it will be a great market for mHealth industry. In the emerging markets surveyed, patient awareness and expectations of mHealth are, on average, far higher than in developed countries (see Figure 10 and Figure 11)
 |
| Figure 10: Patients are more aware of mHealth in emerging markets (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2012) |
 |
| Figure 11: Emerging market patients have greater expectations of mHealth (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2012) |
More importantly, far more patients are already using mHealth. 59% of emerging-market patients use at least one mHealth application or service, compared with 35% in the developed world, and among those who do not, emerging-market residents are more interested in starting.
New approaches are also being used for delivery health services in more cost effective way.
In Mexico, for example, a telephone-based health care advice and triage service is available to more than one million subscribers and their families for $5 a month, paid through phone bills.
In India, an entrepreneur has proved that high-quality, no-frills maternity care can be provided for one-fifth of the price charged by the country’s other private providers.
In New York City, the remote monitoring of chronically ill elderly patients has reduced their rate of hospital admissions by about 40 percent (McKinsey report).
As an emerging economic country, China will be a large market for mHealth industry. After team member Connie Liu graduated from my college in US, she went back to China in 2012, and she could feel the developing shift away form just looking at the economic growth. People started to care more about their health more than before and also for their next generation. From organic food to mobile health equipment, people increase their awareness for all the things good for health.
However, other than the great opportunities, this industry also have some threats. The most important one is the products, and products need innovation. Unfortunately, health care can be an isolated and local activity also due to local regulation: innovations are not widely known across different systems or beyond sector boundaries. Merely identifying and promoting innovations isn’t enough, however—leaders need to understand whether, and how, the lessons of innovators can be replicated elsewhere.
Cardionet – A new mHealth Player
Build a concept
Cardionet Inc. was founded in 1999 with the clear strategy to eliminate the limitation of traditional cardiac monitoring by integrating mobile technology.Data in 2009 shows that there are over 4 million Americans having cardiac arrhythmia, and 78 million patient need to keep monitoring their heart rate at hospital according the same data. This at a cost of nearly 26'500 USD per person. Cardionet's Mobile Cardiac Outpatient TelemetryTM ("MCOT™") can do the same at a fraction of the costs of only 1'300 USD, i.e. at about 5%!
Source: Cardionet on YouTube
Make it happen
The traditional way for monitoring the heart rate are Holter Monitor, Event Monitor or In-Hospital cardiac telemetry. None of them are wireless, and the disadvantages include short duration of measurement, delay in reporting, symptoms driven measurement limitation in recording, need of manual intervention and transmission. The resulting diagnostic yield (% where the heart measurements can be used to diagnose a heart condition) is 7% and 15% for Holter Monitor and Event Monitor respectively.
 |
| Figure 12: Differences in Diagnostic Yield (Source: https://www.cardionet.com/media/pdf/evolutionofmonfinal.ppt) |
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| Figure 13: The CardioNet System (Source: http://wenku.baidu.com/view/b1caab4c767f5acfa1c7cdda.html) |
Consolidating the market
There is no doubt MCOT is an advanced and beneficial device at the core of Cardionet's business. But patient may not use this kind of product if it can’t be reimbursed by their health insurance even though FDA license It’s smart that Cardionet quickly found its successful business model and way of marketing which is cooperating with health insurance company. For instant, Cardionet announced a three-year-cooperation agreement with one of the biggest insurance company United Healthcare insurance in 2013. This is a win-win situation ensuring Cardionet a stable income cash flow. Since MCOT built up a good reputation on detecting and treating heard conditions early, the insurance company also saves money for treating cardiac arrhythmia in the long run. The revenue grows 33% in 2014 compared to 2013, and the net loss is in a decreasing trend. Cardionet serviced approximately 550,000 patients in 2014.Continuing Effort
Currently, Cardionet has a positive strong growth trend, and they are implementing the following strategy: To solidify company’s position as the leading provider of outpatient cardiac monitoring services, expand presence in the research services market and leverage monitoring platform into new markets.
- There is a strong market demand for a smaller and lighter devices. The new generation of MOTC Cardionet devices is 45% lighter and 30% smaller.
Figure 14: New Cardionet MCOT device (Source: https://www.cardionet.com) - Market requests a device with multiple functions. After reviewing the last generation of Cardionet, it enriches devices' new functions, patient video support, multi-language, a large OLED color touch screen and power switch, send and received text message.
- Previous devices where isolated and could not share data beyond with other mobile devices. Cardionet developed an application in Apple store, with which patients could access the data on their iPad.
Figure 15: Cardionet iPad access (Source: https://www.cardionet.com) - After being renamed to Biotelemetry, the company is working on providing more bio-related devices and services, not just cardio monitoring.
As a new player in the mHealth industry, Cardionet is facing a heating competition. The company keeps strengthening its competitive advantage through a serious of acquisitions in various areas.
- Healthcare devices manufacturer: Cardionet designs and manufactures the devices and facilities on its own. The acquisition of ECG Scanning & Medical Services makes company more productive.
- Health services provider: After setting up its own medical subsidiary, Cardionet further enriches its capabilities on the research side with the acquisition of Agility Centralized Research Services.
- Mobile hardware, software & network providers: With long and close cooperating with AT&A, Cardionet stabilizes its mobile services. The acquisition of Biomedical Systems Corporation's all assets in 2014 gives company access to internally develop Holter software.
Overall, Cardionet is a good example of innovation, together with the mobile technology creates MCOT, and keeps improving the quality and efficiency of devices and services. But we believe Cardionet still needs to explore more on providing better user-experience for their devices and make their devices easily connect with other mobile devices (not just the iPad). A further direction to move into could be to just manufacture the sensor part of a heart monitoring device and link with a smartphone or smartwatch. Cardionet could also explore further ways to better collect, store and utilize the data it is collecting. Advances in cloud technology and big data analytics offer new opportunities.
Conclusions and Outlook
Mobile technology and health services are a marriage made in heaven and having a huge impact on health industry while changing the way health services are provided and received.Many challenges and questions remains and provide new opportunities for further innovation.
- How can the national regulation be harmonized or standardized to allow for easier access across national mHealth markets?
- As mHealth devices are more connected, how can the security be maintained, e.g. from hacking and manipulating the device's sensors?
- Can the health data be standardized so that it's easier to share between devices and its ecosystems?
- How can further technological advances be used further improved mHealth services?
- Are there limits on how the collected health data can be used?
- Etc.
Many socio-ethical impacts still need to be discussed.
- Who is the owner of your health data?
- Who has access to your health data? How is access granted? How is the data protected?
- How long will the health data be stored?
- Would it be acceptable for a health insurance to reduce your premium your have to pay if you give the insurance access to your health data?
- etc.
More questions than answers but one thing is sure, mHealth is here to stay and to evolve further. More offsprings of this marriage can be seen along the digital path (see Figure 16).
 |
| Figure 16: More disruptive forces along the Digital Path (Source: own graphic) |
New technology like cloud computing and big data analytics and new players move into the health services market. For example IBM is working together with a health care company McCale to how see IBM’s technology could help doctors make better use of clinical data. (Orcutt, 2015).
The possibilities are endless....
Dear commenters, the possibilities are endless.What do you think the future for mHealth will bring?
Where do you see the opportunities, challenges and threats?
Share your thoughts and let's start a discussion.
References
Athenahealth company website. Retrieved from http://www.athenahealth.com/ on 17th of April, 2015.Bouysen, A. (2013), Why healthcare costs are hijacking childhood, http://afterthemillennials.com/2013/02/28/why-healthcare-costs-are-hijacking-childhood/. Retrieved 16 April 2015.
Cardionet, Concept = Win, Strategy = Epic Fail. (2010, August 31). Retrieved from http://singularityhub.com/2010/08/31/cardionet-concept-win-strategy-epic-fail/
CardioNet-A case study smart services leadership summit.(2008) Retrieved from http://wenku.baidu.com/view/b1caab4c767f5acfa1c7cdda.html
CardioNet Annual report 2015. Retrieved from
http://quote.morningstar.com/stock-filing/Annual-Report/2014/12/31/t.aspx?t=XNAS:BEAT&ft=10-K&d=05177547e5ad07391dd53f91a4b06d51
Economist Intelligence Unite (2012) Emerging mHealth: Paths for growth. Retrieved from www.pwc.com/mhealth.
Fitbit website. Retrieved from http://www.fitbit.com/cn on 17th of April, 2015.
Guangzheng hangseng investment report on Bio telemptry.(2013, August 6). Retrieved from
http://dln.gzs.com.cn/mail/201307/Attachment/8696ff7e-7cb3-464d-b7d5-7702d95c6ab7.pdf
Jahns, R-G. (2010), 500m people will be using healthcare mobile applications in 2015.
Jawbone website. Retrieved from https://jawbone.com/ on 17th of April, 2015.
Mechael, Patricia; Kwan, Ada; and Kern, Dayle. Chapter 9: Mobile Health. in Global Mobile: Applications and Innovations for Worldwide Mobile Ecosystem. by Bruck, Peter A. & Rao, M. (eds.) New Jersey: USA, Information Today, Inc.
Mobile Cardiac Outpatient Telemetry (MCOT) - Cardiac Telemetry | CardioNet Event Monitors. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.cardionet.com/
OECD (2013), Health at a Glance 2013: OECD Indicators, OECD Publishing, Paris.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/health_glance-2013-en.
Orcutt, M. (2015), Meet the Health-Care Company IBM Needed to Make Watson More Insightful, http://www.technologyreview.com/news/536751/meet-the-health-care-company-ibm-needed-to-make-watson-more-insightful/. Retrieved 17 April 2015.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/health_glance-2013-en.
Orcutt, M. (2015), Meet the Health-Care Company IBM Needed to Make Watson More Insightful, http://www.technologyreview.com/news/536751/meet-the-health-care-company-ibm-needed-to-make-watson-more-insightful/. Retrieved 17 April 2015.
PwC & GSMA (2012), Touching lives through mobile health Assessment of the global market opportunity.
Qualcomm Life company website. Retrieved from http://www.qualcommlife.com/ on 17th of April, 2015.
Sotera Wireless website. Retrieved from www.soterawireless.com on 17th of April, 2015.
Through raising questions at the end of the report, you have listed the uncertainties and possibilities of mHealth, thanks for sharing. With the combination of other new technologies like cloud and big data, mHealth has becomes more and more commercially viable. But at the same time, it would face the problems brought from the shortages of cloud and big data, like the security and privacy concerns.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the team that application and development of mHealth depends heavily on the economic and technology development degree in each country or regions, and how open people are to this new technology. There is no doubt that China is a large market for mHealth, but as an old fashion person, I think mHealth at its early stage in China, will be used for information gathering only for references, rather than managing people’s own health or medication in real life. As such, its development in China may need more time or in a totally different way.
Very insteresting and worthy of learning topic on mobile technology care industry. In your blog, two areas of mhealth applications are for aging people and cardiological disease, the most concerned populations worldwide. From a perspective of public health or as a complementary to public health, mHealth definitely priovide an innovative yet efficent way for people to predict, pre-control and diagosis during different stages. I am really amazed at the fact that there are 500m people use smartphone health applications with wearables. From a perspective of business, there is big prospect for mHealthcare market with wide application of mobile device and big data, youe ending with some questions indicates that the emerging market is highly hopeful even though there does exist uncertainties such as ownership of health data and the possibility of manipulation. Opportunity always coexits with uncertainty. That is the natural law. Regarding the relevant market in China, i am not on the side of above comments by 53672715. On the contrary, China will be a charming market to promote the mhealth, just look at the numbers of Apples' sale and its increase. It is not an issue of old fashion or after fashion, it is the demand and care for people's health.Lastly, a tiny quesiton here, the developped market and emerging market is defined according to the economy status or to the mHealth market conditions? Thanks.
ReplyDeleteSee the revised version by pulling down
DeleteStudent ID: 53747730
ReplyDeleteDear Team, thanks for your deep analysis of the E-health market, as well as its combination of mobile technology. Mobile healthcare really has a potentially huge market opportunity due to the increasing aging population and decreasing medical service per person. It promises citizens with more accessible, cost-effective, predictive, participatory, preventative and most importantly individual-oriented care.
However, eHealth still meets some challenges in its way of increasing nationwide usage. One of these challenge can be required citizen’s eHealth literacy. E-health resources and information provided either by mobile or online websites require the consumers’ ability to read, understand relevant medical language. Technologically, e-health solutions do help expand medical industry, but it also calls for decision makers to be more sophisticated of knowledge across medical and telecommunication industry. Another challenges can be the management of information quality for e-health and informational security.
The future of e-health may have a picture that consumers can cure themselves. When the precision of medical diagnosis improved over year, human physicians and nurses will be taken better advantage for heavy hospitalized patients. The strategy for the future must then involve immediate and massive investment in intelligent medical software and more importantly, a social transition to a "machine trust" mentality, where health decisions can be made by computing agents and medical devices rather than doctors or patients. This could eliminate the error-prone features of the current healthcare system.
Thank you Team 4 for your comprehensive analysis about the mobile health industry. Great job in using plenty amount of data to support your thesis. I enjoyed reading your blog, thanks a lot for sharing.I am amazed by how technology has advanced in the healthcare industry and the positive impacts that mobile technology has brought to mankind. However, many questions still run in my mind about the overall feasibility and the unintended consequences that technology such as mHealth may impose.
ReplyDeleteThe privacy and security of the health data is one my biggest concerns. What you have raised at the end of your blog are indeed questions worth to think about. Who has the ownership to our health data? How much control do we really have in the protection of our health data? Even the mobile technologies that we are now using so commonly, many apps installed on our mobile devices are actually tracking our daily activities such as who we communicate with, what type of music we listen to, how much do we pay for our bills, etc…. All this may happen without our conscious awareness. With mHealth, how can we ensure companies will not use our medical records for commercial use or if they would transfer the data to third parties without first having our permissions?? In my opinion, in order to achieve higher success in mHealth solutions, stronger regulations or legislations such as approval of devices and medical apps must be developed by authorities. Only then, patients and healthcare providers can gain more trust and confidence in this technology.
Also, some researches show that Wi-fi / wireless devices may have negative effects to personal health. Would the wireless monitor attached to the body of the patient unintendedly be harmful instead of being helpful to the patient? Would the wireless signals transmitted by the device interfere the heart rate signals collected and thus affecting the accuracy of the patients’ health data? These are some of the questions I thought about. Thanks again for your analysis.
Reference: http://www.globalhealingcenter.com/natural-health/10-shocking-facts-health-dangers-wifi/#14
DeleteThank you for introduce the mobile technology with the health care.
ReplyDeleteWe all know that Apple has just announced its Medical Research Program in the 2015 Spring Conference. Now mobile phone has play an extremely important role, and the only item that people carry it all day long is the mobile phone. Nothing is more important than our health, mobile device as the information collecting point or the transmission station which could integrate the health care and the social network together.
However, for the implementation of the above features, the technology level is not that difficult, why it developed in a very low speed and hard to promote?
I think the keep point is the limitation of the battery industry. If engineers want users to wear the device 24 hours a day and 7days a week, the key point is to design a relative long working hours. On the other hand, the development of lithium batteries encountered a bottleneck at present, Lithium-ion polymer battery is one of the lithium-ion battery, which using a solid polymer gel or liquid organic solvent substitution and contain better performance. The fact is it still not met\ the demand of the battery of mobile device (i.e. small size, high capacity).
Dear Re-Prism,
ReplyDeleteGreat job indeed! Thanks so much for your wonderful sharing. mHealth is so close to our daily life and is needed by large population which I believe will definitely embrace bright prospect. I personally appreciate the diagrams and pictures in your story which have provided vivid indication and persuasive proof. And you have raised a lot of open questions for discussion at the end of you story which I think is quite interesting and innovative.
It is expected that along with the development of mHealth, plenty of related emerging trends will be included such as health extension services, social mobilization for infectious disease prevention, clinical care and remote patient monitoring etc. However, serious legal issues may be potentially be raised in particular in developing countries that lack privacy and data protection laws, which may results in the abuse of E-health records or data.
You have mentioned that “far more patients are already using mHealth. 59% of emerging-market patients use at least one mHealth application or service, compared with 35% in the developed world”. Nevertheless, it is reported by World Health Organization from June 2011, “that higher income countries show more mHealth activity than do lower income countries. Countries in the European Region are currently the most active and those in the African Region the least active” source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MHealth
I believe developing countries share more interest in mHealth due to the convenience and cost-saving advantages, however, the application and R&D of mHealth requires interdisciplinary resources as well as relatively perfect social, economic, legal systems, which may delay the popularization than that in developed countries.
Your team really did a good job! Thanks for your insightful sharing.
ReplyDeleteMobile health is the next emerging trend and is booming in the developed countries like USA. You raised a very good example of Cardionet which successfully implemented its innovative products with advanced mobile technology and acute market positioning. As you mentioned in the blog, besides the mobile technology, other available resources such as cloud computing, big data will exert further influence on prospect of mhealth industry. It is a keen competition as more and more giants desire to seize the opportunities and secure market share when embracing such a new trend. In 2014, Google Ventures invested usd130M to Flatrion Health, a startup that organizes real-time oncology data to help cancer patients and doctors. It released the signal that the mobile technology was increasingly shifted from data gathering to data analysis. Back to China, it is still a blank status for such a field. Although Baidu opened its big data search engine and established Baidu Health Brain in collaboration with Xiangyun Hospital, it is still at an initial and immature stage. The whole integrated and analytical mobile health market is full of challenges and opportunities. Apparently, the social and economical factors play vital roles in accelerating the mobile health processing in China, specifically the civil health system. It is a long way to go but still promising.
Hi Team,
ReplyDeleteVery interesting and worthy of learning topic on mobile technology in healthcare industry. In your blog, two areas of mHealth applications are for aging people and cardiologic disease, the most concerned populations worldwide. From a perspective of public health or as a complementary to public health, mHealth definitely provide an innovative yet efficient way for people to predict, pre-control and diagnose potential diseases during different stages. I am really amazed at the fact that there are 500m people using smartphone health applications with wearables. From a perspective of business, there is big prospect for mHealth care market with wide application of mobile device driven by big data.
Your ending with some questions indicates that the emerging market is highly hopeful even though there does exist uncertainties such as ownership of health data and the possibility of manipulation. Opportunity always coexists with uncertainty. That is the natural law.
Regarding the relevant market in China, I am not on the side of above comments by 53672715. On the contrary, China will be a charming market to promote the mHealth. Just have a look at the numbers of Apples' sale and its increase, we can evaluate how many people are using mobile device. It is a huge market and big trend.
Moreover, there are vast amount of data generating daily regarding people’s health. So it is not an issue of old fashion or after fashion, it is the demand and care for people's health.
Lastly, a tiny question here, the developed market and emerging market is defined according to the economy status or to the mHealth market conditions? Thanks again.
Thanks for team re-prism's sharing. Very interesting and informative. I was actually a bit surprised by the finding that emerging markets actually have more knowledge and expectation on mobile health than developed markets. I used to work in a healthcare insurance company, only for a very short period, but I know they have put a lot of money on mobile health apps. I do think this is a market with great potential and you guys have already offered pretty sufficient supporting points. Especially for developing countries, I think the technology could be more valuable as it could help to coordinate and balance the healthcare resources which are insufficient and uneven in those countries. Maybe that is the reason those countries have more expectation on the technology. However, I do not see too much application in China which is a major developing country. I think there is still long way to go for them But I do agree with the above comments that China as well as other emerging markets have great potential for mobile health.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the detailed introduction of mobile technology and healthcare industry. I really appreciate your team using large numbers of figures to illustrate the industry profile.
ReplyDeleteMobile Internet would spawn two disruptive industry, mobile education and mobile health. Low-cost hardware enable to detect health condition, while mobile devices is used for displaying and computing anywhere and anytime with back-end data processing and cloud excavation. Combining these three together, it will certainly bring a lot of emerging industry products and services.
However, mobile health is not so good as it seems to be. Although it breeds enormous potential and business opportunities, at this moment, the industry did not think so mature. Even some companies have received angel investment, they are still encountering a variety of challenges and puzzles in different degrees.
For health company, to establish a sustainable business model remains a big obstacle. The hardware are not as popular as we think of. Traditional education still plays an significant role in the daily health care. People seem to trust the inspection results from hospital. Many companies have tried to increase value-added services, looking to commercialise their products and services approach.
Thanks for team Re-Prism telling a coherent mHealth story to us. Once comes to the terminology “mobile health”, the first thing I could think of is the apps “Health” launched by iOS 8 Apple (yes I am an Apple Fan, while not a crazy one;-p ), which can monitor the walking and running distance, record the user’s sleeping and nutrition conditions, create the medical ID for emergency access, and so forth.
ReplyDeleteIt is undoubtedly that with the development of technology and economics, people are more and more care about their health, which bring lots of opportunities to a list of industries. As stated in this article, the emerging market patients have great expectations on mHealth and the number of end-point users also grows a lot by every year. Facing with such a huge market, how to occupy the maximum marketshare may become the most essential target in a mobile company. I think it will be better if the article could add something about the behaviors of these competitors and the value chain related to the mobile health industry., then we can learn more about the healthcare market operating system. Any emerging technology will has its own opportunity, challenge, and threats, while just like what saying here, the possibilities are endless. Thanks again for your sharing ;-)
Thanks for your sharing as it is a very interesting topic to be think of. Smartphones have a number of characteristics so the advantages of using Smartphone over other technologies, such as portability, constant internet connectivity, enough computing power to run complex applications.
ReplyDeletePer study, the penetration of wireless devices amongst the US population was recorded at 102% which is a very high number so it is a powerful tool for industries to use it to increase their market share.
For example, clinical uses of smartphones are being increasingly documented in the medical literature; Communication between medical staff and hospitals has also been facilitated greatly with the use of integrating paging systems with smartphone notifications.
Thank you Re-Prism group for sharing us how mobile technology affect health care industry. Your analysis is very professional and your example is powerful. Your youtube link is fantasy gives us full of imagination .It is good that your article use a lot of chart or pictures to show us data .Especially the Fig 5 show us the increased demand of health care is not met with increased supply demand of medical personal.So the mobile technology on health care is really in need.
ReplyDeleteMy grandpa has heavy heart disease and always suffer from it. So we want to monitor him every moment if there are some emergency happens, we can help him in time. So my father bought a smart hand band for him which can monitor his heart beat and blood pressure.
We need to use sensors to detect user’s body condition and use intelligent system to deal with these data. Mobile devices can help hospital to monitor patient’s physical condition , it can save much medical resources also save patients’ money.
“The traditional way for monitoring the heart rate are Mobile Monitor, Event Monitor or In-Hospital cardiac telemetry. None of them are wireless, and the disadvantages include short duration of measurement, delay in reporting, symptoms driven measurement limitation in recording, need of manual intervention and transmission.” So it is in an urgent make a technology revolution to help health care industry become more efficient.