Mobile: The future of Healthcare

There has been phenomenal increase in the use of mobile technologies in all aspects of our lives. The disruptive powers of these technologies have altered the ways in which people communicate and conduct business and the advantages and disadvantages of mHealth is discussed in the video shown above. This disruptive power and the innovations that have been made in their wake are transforming the health care industry.

Mobile device users who downloaded at least one mHealth application doubled between 2011 and 2012 in America. This significant increase in the use of mHealth is for a number of reasons such as improvement of technology, change in demographics, better accessibility etc. The article by Susanna Fox and Maeve Duggan concluded that women between the ages of 30 and 64 and smartphone owners are more likely than other cell phone owners to have signed up for health text alerts. Mobile health information also seems to appeal to certain groups of health consumers: caregivers, people who went through a recent medical crisis, and those who experienced a recent, significant change in their physical health such as gaining or losing a lot of weight, becoming pregnant, or quitting smoking.

Aging population, increasing chronic illnesses and accelerating health costs will propel mobile solution growth. A major hurdle to the growth has been the uncertainty around regulation. Mobile health applications exist in an area between medical devices which are highly regulated and computer applications which are not much regulated. When does a mobile device warrant regulation by the FDA? Unless developers are sure how the applications will be regulated they may not be very willing to spend their time on developing innovative products.

In conclusion, mHealth will define the future of healthcare. However, like all novel technologies it must first overcome hurdles to fulfill its promise.

References

mHealth in an mWorld How mobile technology is transforming health care by Deloitte

Mobile Health 2012 by Susannah Fox and Maeve Duggan