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Why “PDA” is no longer appropriate
 There is little benefit to be gained from deciphering the ever-moving target of teen speak, which at the present time is greatly influenced by abbreviations used when text messaging. “IDK my BFF Jill,” as the popular Cingular wireless commercial once taught us. For the healthcare industry, though, some wireless industry semantics are worth exploring at the risk of remaining known as the industry least likely to adopt new technology.
For example, ask a teenager today what “PDA” means, and you won’t enter into a discussion about the glory days of Palm Pilots or the ergonomics of stylii. Instead, you’d likely hear about “public displays of affection.”
While physicians, nurses and hospital staff come to grips with the idea that the term “PDA” is no longer appropriate, the telecom industry is already talking about dumping the term that has come to replace it: “smartphone.”
A new report from Forrester Research analyst Ian Fogg suggests that the term “smartphone” is no longer helpful because it fails to describe any discernible grouping of today’s increasingly “smart” handsets. Many in the healthcare industry still believe the term “PDA” to be a worthwhile constituent of their everyday vocabulary, even though personal digital assistants could include everything from a mobile phone, a handheld video game console and — soon enough — next-generation digital cameras.
“A PDA was essentially a mini-computer that was a pocket-sized device,” Fogg told mobiheathnews in a recent interview. “‘PDA’ was a category of devices that basically got killed by the mobile phone in the early 2000s, because the main thing consumers used that device category for was address book, calendar and maybe email. Those things fit naturally into today’s mobile phones.”
Fogg points out that Palm, which led the PDA space while it existed, no longer makes new PDA models and hasn’t for years. Windows Mobile-based PDA makers like Dell called it quits on PDAs a few years back too, Fogg noted. Most of the applications available on the legacy PDA platforms are now available from the application stores run by various phone makers and wireless carriers.
Fogg contends that the reason the use of PDAs and the term itself has persisted in the healthcare industry might be that many hospitals and other places of care have long banned the use of mobile phones. Since PDAs do not have cellular connectivity, they have been acceptable. The ban stemmed from fears of interference with medical equipment, but thanks to newer technology and a diligent FCC, many bans on wireless technology and devices in clinical settings have been lifted.
So, what happened to the term “smartphone?” In his report, Fogg pokes holes in each of the various ways people have attempted to define “smartphone.” People point to specific features of a phone to determine whether it’s a smartphone: “Specifically to having an MP3 player, having a Web browser and having a good enough camera,” Fogg explained. “The problem with that is if you look at all the so-called ‘feature phones’ that the industry does not call smartphones they are all getting better and better cameras… better browsers… and even touch screens.”
Most phones look pretty “smart” to consumers these days, Fogg concludes.
Wonder what they think when their doctor consults a handy PDA?
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| Interview: Mayo Clinic’s mobile strategy
mobihealthnews recently caught up with Scott Eising, director of product management for Mayo Clinic Internet Services, to discuss his group’s strategy and pain points for moving Mayo Clinic’s online offerings to the mobile platform. Every major provider of health services and information is trying to figure out how best to go mobile. Eising offered a peek behind the curtain at Mayo to discuss how the not-for-profit, integrated medical practice is planning to do just that.
Mayo Clinic employs 3,300 physicians, scientists and researchers as well as 46,000 allied health staff at its three sites in Rochester, MN, Jacksonville, FL, and Phoenix, AZ. Mayo treats more than 500,000 people each year.
mobihealthnews: In general, what kind of opportunity does Mayo Clinic have to capitalize on mobile platforms?
Eising: It depends on the audience. Our group serves a number of audiences. On the consumer side, we have a presence MayoClinic.com on the Web, we certainly think providing a mobile experience for accessing health information is going to be paramount. We really don’t do that today at all. How we optimize our content for mobile is kind of a question for us. Do we do the m.mayoclinicDOTcom approach and offer a narrow subset of content that we share with that audience? We have so much content so that could be challenging. I think in the near term we will probably go in the consumer app direction, just because with the browser capabilities on these newer smartphones the experience isn’t too bad when you can pinch and expand and get at the content you want. First on the mobile side, we will look at smartphones for consumers and some apps. We are a user-centric design shop though, and we need to do more research about what are the mobile needs and habits of our customer base on the consumer side. We have a lot of data about the Web and their habits there, but our user research group isn’t convinced that those habits will transfer over. From a general standpoint, that seems to be a real gap out there in the health area, anyway, about what things do consumers want to do from a health perspective on mobile. Beyond the obvious — symptoms, first aid or find-a-doctor. We are going to do some fundamental user research with several audiences to get a sense of how they are using their mobile phone today in general — calls, text messaging, mobile browsing. Then get to what are the potential opportunities or pain points from either an information or health management standpoint that would be better served via mobile versus tethered to a desk.
Can you highlight any of those pain points about moving to a mobile platform? Continue >>
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| A sneak peek at Jitterbug’s “Service Store”
GreatCall, parent company to Jitterbug, the easy-to-use mobile phone service for seniors, launched a new phone called the Jitterbug J, which is a big step since the service provider formerly only had two other phones available. It’s much more interesting, however, what that new phone makes possible for Jitterbug customers: the new “Jitterbug Service Store.”
The new store is made possible by the J being 1xEVDO-enabled, meaning it can connect to 2G wireless data networks. Jitterbug is not promoting the data capability because the phone is not an “Internet-enabled” phone in the sense that it is equipped with a Web browser. Instead, the service provider wants the data connectivity to be invisible to its customer base. Jitterbug’s CEO David Inns describes the data connectivity as being embedded into the services themselves. Jitterbug worked with partners Samsung and Qualcomm to create a more seamless data connectivity experience for its customers.
The “hidden” data network isn’t the only unique strategy Jitterbug is pursuing. In a world of application stores like the iPhone’s “AppStore,” BlackBerry’s “App World” or Google’s “Android Market,” Jitterbug is clearly taking a different tack by stressing the service behind the applications it plans to launch for its user group, which is primarily 55-years-old and older.
“We have launched what we are calling a Services Store,” Jitterbug CEO David Inns told mobihealthnews in a recent interview. “It’s not an App Store, because as you know with Jitterbug we are all about services… the reason we call it the Services Store is unlike an App Store, and this is especially true for health and wellness, users want more than just an application. They want a live operator that you can talk to, who can help you with the service.”
“So many examples of wireless health services are being shown running on iPhones, but we go to those developers and ask them where they think the healthcare problem is in this country. Is it really with the 30-year-olds? That’s the group with the highest penetration of iPhones: 20- and 30-year-olds,” Inns said. “If that’s where the healthcare problem is in this country, great: let’s keep making iPhone apps then. If you want to get serious about tackling the healthcare problems in this country where they actually exist, which is in the 60+ age group, then you should be working with us to develop services that are easy to use so they get compliance.”
Inns gave mobihealthnews a preview of the services that are planned to become available in Jitterbug’s Service Store in the months ahead: Continue >>
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Interview: VC’s tips for mHealth start-ups
Michael Goldberg of Mohr Davidow Ventures (MDV) is currently, actively pursuing start-ups in the personalized medicine sector, including companies that make use of wireless sensors to collect clinically-actionable data for point-of-care. Goldberg’s firm recently invested in wireless remote monitoring company Corventis.
mobihealthnews recently had the opportunity to discuss MDV’s interest in the wireless health space, FDA regulation, tips for having a successful start-up and whether we are in a health IT investment bubble.
mobihealthnews: When did you begin investing in the personalized medicine space?
Goldberg: That was in 2005.
What triggered the initial investments — why this industry?
Several things. I first began working at MDV in 2005, but before that I participated in [a round of investing] for a first generation personalized medicine company called Genomic Health. We at MDV think of personalized medicine in a much broader context, but I’ll focus my comments on personalized medicine enabled by wireless [technology].
Starting in 2005, we had been investing in areas where biochemical signals were centrally important to understanding disease states and providing insight to clinically-actionable steps. It also occurred to us that for some organ systems, electrical signals might be used in an analagous way. We started to look at ways to use sensor technology along with wireless technology to measure clinically relevant parameters in the cardiac area in particular. That played to our strengths at the firm, which was and is the desire to invest in areas at the intersection of converging disciplines. We have expertise and partnerships in the areas of material science, electrical engineering, algorithm development as well as medicine and wireless technologies. So personalized medicine is an exciting area that allows us to play to our strengths.
The push then for beginning to invest back in 2005 was noticing the trend — which is continuing today — that these industries were converging?
Yes, exactly. I thought that the talk that Dr. Eric Topol gave at the [Wireless Life Sciences Alliance] meeting and some of the companies he mentioned are really on the cutting edge of the future of 21st century medicine.
According to VentureBeat, you are looking to invest in start-ups in the wireless health space that have “no risk” of FDA regulation. Is that a fair characterization and what types of companies would that include? Continue >>
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| On Google Wave and Google Health
From the same engineers that designed Google Maps comes an online collaboration tool called Google Wave that attempts to answer the question: What would email look like if it was invented today, instead of some 40 years ago before the Internet even existed? Some have called Google’s answer to that question a Twitter-killer, but given the application’s status as an open-source project, it could have far greater implications.
We wonder if Google Wave will accelerate development of the Google Health PHR, which has yet to become fully functional on mobile phones, even though Google has stated their intent to develop its mobile functionality more fully.
First, a brief explanation of what Google Wave looks like today, according to Google: “In Google Wave you create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly. It’s concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content – it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use “playback” to rewind the wave and see how it evolved.” Continue >>
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| Guest Column: “Collaboration without glory”
“Seventy-five percent of what we need to do here has nothing to do with technology,” explained Mark Dronzek, Chief Information Officer for Family Health International at an mHealth conference hosted by the University of California at San Francisco last week. mHealth is ultimately about people and the need to transfer data not about the device, Dronzek continued.
Dronzek was one of several panelists at last week’s cross-sector gathering of mHealth leaders at the Information Communication Technology Bay Area Mobile Health (mhealth) Partnership Forum. The conference highlighted the new mHealth Alliance, an agreement between the Rockefeller, Vodafone and United Nations Foundations designed to facilitate global innovation and ensure maximum impact in the field of mHealth.
Dronzek’s panel focused on mHeath field activities and challenged the audience to remember the individuals tasked with implementing mHealth applications on-the-ground. Joining him was Clint McClellan, Senior Director, Health & Life Sciences, Qualcomm, Inc., Frank R. Rijsberman, Ph.D., Director of Programs, Google.org, and Tim Wood, ICT Innovation Technical Project Manager, Grameen Foundation. Each of the panelists stressed the need for organizational change management in order to successfully scale mHealth services.
Dronzek’s panel focused on mHeath field activities and challenged the audience to remember the individuals tasked with implementing mHealth applications on-the-ground. Joining him was Clint McClellan, Senior Director, Health & Life Sciences, Qualcomm, Inc., Frank R. Rijsberman, Ph.D., Director of Programs, Google.org, and Tim Wood, ICT Innovation Technical Project Manager, Grameen Foundation. Each of the panelists stressed the need for organizational change management in order to successfully scale mHealth services. Continue >>
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| Prediction: Smartphones to replace pagers
No surprise here.
Popular medical blogger Dr. Kevin Pho, also known as KevinMD, has a noteworthy post on the growing popularity of smartphone use in hospitals and smartphones’ “inevitable” displacement of pagers. A recent study by Manhattan Research found that 64 percent of doctors use smartphones like BlackBerrys or iPhones. Each of those platforms support mobile applications that provide pager functionalities.
BlackBerry partner Wallace Wireless offers a pager service called WIC Pager. Wallace points out that since many healthcare workers already carry a smartphone, “a single device solution reduces the costs and resources necessary to manage the traditional pager and cellphone combination.” WIC Pager can leverage cellular networks as well as in-building WiFi. It also “allows for quick responses by implementing a one-click call back feature,” which trumps legacy pagers one-way flow. The service also offers “real-time reporting on all pager alerts” so administrators can keep track of messages, too.
While the iPhone supports a number of pager-like apps, one service of note is Voalte. The Sarasota, Florida-based start-up has been turning heads since its launch last year with its voice, alarm and text functionality. Voalte describes itself as a “unified communications solution enabling phone calls across the hospital VoIP system, text messaging via the user directory, and user-friendly alarm management.” Voalte enables caregivers to receive and respond to alarms dispatched by more than 200 hospital systems and devices. The service also touts its flexibility: Users can add additional applications to the iPhone allowing them to customize the service to particular departments or user groups.
“The pager is growing more extinct by the day,” KevinMD concludes. We couldn’t agree more.
Read KevinMD’s entire post here.
Check out more about the Wallace Wireless WIC Pager here.
Read up on Voalte’s iPhone-based service.
Related:
Twice as many physicians use iPhones in 2009
Will doctors stick by Palm?
@HIMSS: Voalte: Voice, Alarms, Texts
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Guest Column: Healthcare’s appeal to carriers
by Philippa Hobbs,
Business Research Executive, Informa Telecoms & Media
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Innovation in mobile healthcare technology is burgeoning but implementation is hampered by the very industry this technology exists to support. The relationship between healthcare systems and health technology can be tortuous, though mutual benefits to levels of patient care and to the bottom line will, if only slowly, drive the sector forward.
As operators look for new opportunities to drive revenue in a stricken market, mobile healthcare is gaining significant traction. Delivering tailored mobile services to healthcare providers may seem a niche business, as healthcare is only one of a number of enterprise verticals and in the UK public market, at least, not exactly known for being a cash-rich or tech-savvy industry. Yet the healthcare vertical offers what operators most desire in the face of a struggling economy — loyal, long-life customers in need of specialist solutions across a large, mobile workforce, and a captive future audience for new revenue-generating innovations such as machine-to-machine communications.
Healthcare as an enterprise presents complicated demands to any supplier – it is fragmented and diverse, spread across a variety of clinical environments, with workforces both in the field and on site, varied end users and wholly variable management depending on how care provision is funded. It is a market with specialist needs, requiring robust and reliable telecommunications for health-critical, as well as business-critical decision-making. Continue >>
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| App aims to help autistics communicate
Heavy, expensive and huge text-to-speech machines may be a thing of the past for parents of autistic children or for families caring for a loved one with Lou Gehrig’s Disease, Down Syndrome, cerebral palsy, ALS or who had suffered through a stroke. Mobile health applications are set to disintermediate the bulky text-to-speech machine market, according to a report in USA Today.
iPhone app developer and Penn State doctoral student Samuel Sennott created Proloquo2Go for anyone who wants a cheaper and easier way to convert text to speech. For the parents of one autistic child that the newspaper profiles, the app has enabled the family to communicate like never before — the child even uses the app to communicate commands to his helper dog, Roscoe, now.
Continue >>
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| Interview: Dr. Hodge, the first iPhone Doctor
You might call her the first iPhone Doctor. If Natalie Hodge, MD, has her way, though, she won’t be the last.
Hodge’s start-up Personal Pediatrics aims to equip a fleet of self-starter pediatricians in major metro areas with iPhones, cloud-based practice software and the marketing know-how to court new parents, families and corporate health programs alike. The company’s plan points to a growing trend of doctors returning to what was once a mainstay of the profession: the house call.
Hodge has already established that the iPhone doctor model works — after more than a decade working in a pediatrics office in St. Louis, Missouri, where she saw up to 35 patients a day for about 10 minutes each, Hodge traded in the patient assembly line to launch Personal Pediatrics. That was three years ago. Back then she had her laptop and Palm Treo in tow.
Since then the convergence of advancements in smartphone technologies, culminating in the iPhone, plus the growing popularity of so-called “concierge” medical practices, where patients typically pay out of pocket for the convenience of house calls or more personalized care, convinced Hodge that pediatricians could provide better care and make more money by leaving the doctor’s office behind. Continue >>
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| Verizon: Healthcare key among 4G services
While speaking at a Barclays Capital conference in New York, Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam reportedly relished in taking potshots at rivals Sprint and AT&T, while touting healthcare services as a key offering of the carrier’s upcoming 4G network rollout, which it will begin to activate next year.
McAdam characterized AT&T’s recent network upgrade announcement as too little too late, old news, and spin: ”No other carrier will be able to match our speeds. It’s a matter of physics. You can’t spin this,” McAdam said.
Once it has 4G live, Verizon Wireless says it will be the first choice for developers and device makers, but the carrier has no plans to rely on any one “hero device” — a clear reference to the iPhone.
“Growth in the future will be measured on number of connections not subscribers,” said McAdam. Multiple connections to the customer will drive future revenue for the carrier and McAdam used a health care example to explain. Here’s the slide McAdam used to demonstrate how healthcare applications would work with its 4G network: Continue >>
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| RehabCare cuts wait times with mobile app
A new mobile application created by a rehabilitation care services company for its workers has cut its patients’ wait times down from 18 hours in some cases to less than 60 minutes. RehabCare Group built the app on top of Salesforce.com’s Force.com platform and has equipped its staff with a version that works on their Apple iPhones.
It only took 4 days to create the new application.
“We have a multiple-step screening process that helps ensure we match our services to our patients’ needs,” Dick Escue, chief information officer at RehabCare, said in a statement. ”Unfortunately this process was taking too much time and was impacting our ability to admit patients quickly.”
RehabCare’s screening process involved manually completing an evaluation form of a patient while in the field, passing that to a program director for review, and then getting final sign-off from the medical director.
For more, check out this ChannelInsider article.
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June 16-17, Ft. Lauderdale:
8th CCS Summit
Transforming Healthcare through Health Information Technology
Designed to help top-level executives, legislators, physicians, regulators and technologists come to grips with the swirling forces of health information technology change, policy development and changing business models, the CCS HIT provides an intimate, high-level forum that facilitates open avenues of communication amongst executives and stakeholders in healthcare.
Register
June 22-23, Seattle, WA:
Sixth Annual Healthcare Unbound Conference & Exhibition
Healthcare Unbound will have a strong focus on use of remote monitoring / home telehealth technologies for wellness promotion and disease management, with a special emphasis on Baby Boomers and the elderly population. The agenda will also cover topics such as the emerging role of mobile/wireless technologies, legal/regulatory developments and reimbursement issues, strategies for success for Healthcare Unbound vendors and much more.
Register
July 27-28, Boston, MA:
The World Health Care Congress Leadership Summit on Wireless Health
This two-day Summit convenes policy-makers, payers, providers and medical group practices from across the nation to discuss business and clinical opportunities for integrating mHealth, Remote Monitoring and Telehealth solutions into existing care systems. Real-life, case studies and the results to-date from pilots at several leading provider organizations will be shared.
Register
October 6-9, San Diego, CA:
CTIA WIRELESS I.T. & Entertainment
No matter what your business is – healthcare, entertainment, fleet management or financial planning – wireless can transform how you do business. International CTIA WIRELESS I.T. & Entertainment brings this possibility to life. With a focus on applications, network architecture and technologies such as LBS, machine-to-machine and WiMAX (just to name a few), this international event brings a community of users, carriers, developers and manufacturers together to generate dialogue, share ideas and debate the economics of MOBILE BUSINESS.
Register
October 27-30, San Diego:
TEDMED 2009
The fifth in a series created by Marc Hodosh and Richard Saul Wurman, TEDMED celebrates conversations that demonstrate the intersection and connections between all things medical and healthcare related: from personal health to public health, devices to design and Hollywood to the hospital. Together, this encompasses more than twenty percent of our GNP in America while touching everyone’s life around the globe.
Register
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