This post is just a list of diseases and conditions to target for wireless enabled treatment, based on Eric Topol’s presentation. Your points are still right on, but they are looking at mHealth from a different lens: “Informed advice from professional doctors” is a great target for mhealth but it’s not a disease or condition.

Personally i think you’re at risk of missing the first and biggest opportunity for wireless devices to improve health outcomes. IMHO Patients empowered through highly personalized information delivered through conventional wireless devices will finally enable the Healthcare industry focus to shift from Treatment to Prevention.

Eric Shmidt at Google is saying: “The fact of the matter is that mobile devices are going to be the way the majority of people get information”

Suzannah Fox at the Pew Internet & American Life Project has a report suggesting that 75-80% of internet users have already looked online for health information, 75% of this group who have a chronic condition say their last health search affected a decision about how to treat their illness/condition AND home broadband users are twice as likely as home dial-up users to do health research on a typical day

As access and use of mobile search continues to grow we are going to witness highly personalised information empowering patients in the decision making process and this will inevitably lead to earlier and more appropriate interventions. Earlier intervention will provide better clinical outcomes, enormous cost savings and can help patients change their behavior in ways that will reduce their chances of suffering from several of the lifestyle related “Targets” you have listed above.

True those are both good use cases for mHealth, but as I wrote: This list was for diseases and other medical conditions that wireless health should target, have targeted, or will target soon. The ones you mentioned wouldn’t fit that category.

Brian

Wireless is already empowering the vast majority of emergency medical 911 calls…. and todays mobiles (via caller ID, IMEI, Location, Biometrics etc) have the potential to connect a patients Digital Care Records with their remote carers. The value of a call with a Doctor is transformed by the sharing of a patients previous medical history and this also increases patient safety, avoids the time/costs of repetitive patient interviewing and supports continuity of care.

If it’s not clear what the benefits of this are check out my slideshow (http://tinyurl.com/4twdsf) where the benefits of wirelessly connecting care and digital records are explained.