At the beginning of the summer, the American Telemedicine Association’s President Jon Linkous wrote a somewhat scathing critique of the hype that surrounded (and continues to surround) all things mHealth. This past week Eric Dishman, an Intel Fellow and director of health innovation and policy for Intel’s Digital Health Group, argued convincingly that right now mHealth is at the apex of the hype cycle:
“This well-intentioned but premature celebration of all things ‘mHealth’ may come back to bite us, if we’re not more careful,” Dishman wrote in his rant, entitled The Hype and Hope of mHealth. Dishman broke his primary concerns down into three buckets: The vaguity of the term “mHealth,” a clear failing to “manage expectations” for mHealth, and an inability to get beyond a few very specific mHealth baises.
Vaguity: “If ‘mHealth’ is all of these things and more….if ‘mHealth’ is everything…then it is nothing. The phrase has become so slippery, so ubiquitous as to become almost useless. We must be more careful in defining and aligning what we’re talking about, and I encourage these various workshops and organizers to spend some time clarifying and specifying what’s at play here,” Dishman wrote.
I sympathize with Dishman on this one, really: The semantics around mHealth and wireless health can be confusing or overly broad at times. Navel-gazing, however, is a bigger danger for such a new industry. Language is rarely precise. Debates over the etymology of mHealth vs. wireless health vs. the new term du jour seem much less important than the real issues: Efficacy, business model, regulatory environment, et al. Continue >>
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