A recent Brookings Institute report that we pointed to last week has drummed up a lot of response from the political commentary crowd: Joe Rothstein, editor of EIN News, penned an editorial in U.S. Politics Today this week that picked up where Brookings Institute’s Darrell West left off:
“Physicians and patients are going to have to learn how to migrate into the new medical world. That may not be as difficult as it seems with a generation or so now having grown up with Nintendo and Game Boy as their constant companions,” Rothstein wrote. “And who now doesn’t have a cell phone, or a smart phone, or an ipod? In the near time horizon it’s likely we will all be customers at the medical app store, customizing our own devices.”
Rothstein’s prediction of a “medical app store” in the “near time horizon” is perhaps wishful thinking, but key to moving wireless health forward. Former Google Health head Adam Bosworth seems to be building his latest start-up Keas around just such an offering. (More on that later this week as Bosworth and team are presenting at Partners’ Connected Health Symposium here in Boston.)
Rothstein, like West before him, lists out the challenges ahead for wireless health and the digital transformation of healthcare in general:
“More difficult will be such matters as 1) encouraging public and private health insurers to cover most mhealth communications and wellness programs (they don’t, now), (2) rewarding providers for work performed within the new system, not just for personal visits or tests ordered, (3) changing licensing of health providers to permit the practice of medicine across state lines (by telemedicine) (4) achieving compatibility among devices made by various manufacturers, and (5) integrating preventive care into the entire system as a full-fledged, and insurance reimbursable, partner.”
Do you agree with Rothstein that, if “steered correctly, technology is going to cure a lot of our health care, and health cost ills?” Read the rest of his commentary over at U.S. Politics Today.
October 20th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
[...] See the article here: Does wireless health need a medical app store? [...]
October 20th, 2009 at 6:20 pm
The big unanswered bogie in the room is payment reform. Just who’s going to lead the way? Tremendous pressures on us physicians to be productive (aka see more patients and do more procedures). Nurses, administrators, clerks and all of the people in our offices depend on each of us to bring in $400K minimum in order to keep our doors open. At around $0.60 to the dollar that means we have to bill out $0.6M a year. The physicians that get the pats are those that are bringing in > $1M per year.
Nobody pays us to try something that doesn’t contribute to the bottom line no matter how much lip service they give in support of eVisits, attempts to keep patients out of the clinic and hospital. The whole system would crash if we did that.
So once again, who do you think will lead the way?