mobihealthnews

BlackBerry: More than a consumer approach

Even though Manhattan Research recently published a report that found twice as many physicians are using iPhones this year than last year, the most popular smartphones in use by physicians today are BlackBerrys. mobihealthnews recently had the chance to discuss wireless healthcare trends with BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion’s Fraser Edward who heads the company’s Healthcare Marketing Group. This first installment from those discussions will cover BlackBerry’s overall health IT strategy and the company’s approach to HIPAA compliance concerns.

Leading the pack

“Four years ago doctors were all using Palm Pilots and they used to beam their contacts to pharmaceutical representatives using infrared,” Edward explained. “For ‘apps’ they used reference guides, drug interaction guides and so on. Whenever they had to get an update they had to plug that device in and they had to tune up their devices every couple of weeks probably.”

“The world now is all about the smartphone,” Edward said. “The smartphone has very much changed the industry. [According to the most recent research,] Palm has dramatically declined in terms of the number of doctors having it in hand, while both BlackBerry and — to a lesser extent — iPhone have increased dramatically. BlackBerry is the market leader for that group.”

Consumer approach alone isn’t enough in a healthcare setting

Edward explained that there are two different groups that BlackBerry services within the IT groups at healthcare facilities — the IT audience, which is taksed with managing hundreds or thousands of devices and monitoring HIPAA compliances and the more consumer-like group of physicians who just walk in to a facility and expect their personal mobile devices to work with their facility’s other IT tools.

“Understanding both sides of that equation is important,” Edward said. “Some of the things that a manufacturer like BlackBerry is doing appeals to both sides and you can make your own inference as to what other platforms are doing, but I think other companies that are coming from a consumer background are trying to do this from the bottom up.” (Psst: I think he means Apple/iPhone.) Continue >>

By 2012: $6B wireless, smart home market

Global wireless sensor networking services, including home health initiatives and smart grids, will be a $6 billion market worldwide by 2012, according research firm ON World.

“Two years ago home owners were installing wood floors and pools but today they are installing in-home energy management and health systems,” says Mareca Hatler, ON World research director. “This trend is being driven by government initiatives and consumers that are demanding cost saving solutions for two of their largest expenses: energy and healthcare,” she says.

ON World noted that wireless sensor-enabled networks “provide dozens of solutions to healthcare’s biggest challenges such as an aging population and rising healthcare costs.” The firm pointed to Bluetooth as the current wireless technology leader in home healthcare products, but also noted Continua Health Alliance’s recent selection of ZigBee’s Health Care profile as a recommended technology for low power local area networks, like sensors networks distributed throughout an assisted living facility. ON World also mentioned AT&T’s planned telehealth monitoring service that uses ZigBee and WiFi.

For more on ON World’s report, read the company’s release.

FCC proposes rules for body area networks

by Mintz Levin’s Russel Fox, Howard Symons, Susan Berson and Heather Westphal

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has proposed to allocate radiofrequency spectrum and establish service and technical rules for the operation of Medical Body Area Network (MBAN) systems. The FCC envisions that MBANs would provide a platform for the wireless networking of multiple body sensors used for monitoring a patient’s physiological data, primarily in health care facilities. The use of MBANs would help eliminate the need for hardwired, patient-attached cables used by current monitoring technologies. The FCC’s proposal is a continuation of its efforts to satisfy the spectrum requirements of wireless medical technologies, and is responsive to a request submitted by GE Healthcare (GEHC). The deadlines for submitting comments and reply comments on the FCC’s proposal are 60 and 90 days, respectively, from the time the proposal is published in the Federal Register, which has not yet occurred.

The FCC envisions that an MBAN could be created through attaching multiple wireless sensors on the patient. The patient-attached devices would take readings of key information, such as temperature, pulse, blood glucose level, blood pressure, respiratory function, and a variety of other physiological metrics. Antenna components in the sensors would then transmit the data wirelessly a short distance to a hub device, which would then relay the data or processed information to another station in the facility for further centralized processing, display, and storage.

Frequency Allocation

The FCC is considering several possible frequency bands for use by MBANs. Continue >>

Healthagen reveals true monetization strategy

Healthagen recently announced that it had extended the functionalities of its iPhone app iTriage to other smartphone platforms by optimizing its website for mobile browsers. While the company did not launch apps for each of these platforms, it noted BlackBerry, Android, Samsung, LG, Nokia, Palm, T-Mobile, Sony [Ericsson] and Motorola as some of the smartphone makers with devices that could now access its content online at www.iTriageHealth.com. The company’s original iPhone app is also now free to download — it used cost $0.99.

Just like the iPhone app before it, the iTriage site aims to help users evaluate their symptoms, learn about the possible causes, find appropriate locations for treatment, and get cost information based on the type of facility they visit. Healthagen said its database now includes listings for some 500,000 physicians across the U.S.

Shortly after announcing its cross-platform smartphone support, Healthagen announced that Colorado-based Centura Health had become its first premier listing for its healthcare facilities database.

Healthagen told mobihealthnews that these premier listings do not give those hospitals priority in results when users conduct searches based on symptoms and initial diagnoses. The company said these listings allow hospitals to market their areas of specialty more effectively in the mobile form factor.

A company spokesman described the deal with Centura Health as representative of iTriage’s “true monetization” strategy – signing deals with hospitals to allow them to market themselves on the iPhone (and now other smartphones). That is, as opposed to selling mobile applications like the iPhone app for $0.99 a pop.

Read on for the press release announcing the Centura Health deal. Continue >>

The 25 Most Wireless Hospitals in the U.S.

For the past 11 years Hospitals & Health Networks (HH&N) magazine has published a list of the Most Wired Hospitals in the U.S. and in recent years the publication has also listed the top 25 Most Wireless Hospitals, an award sponsored by Intel. HH&N is published by Health Forum, an American Hospital Association company.

The Most Wired Awards aim to identify hospitals that are using IT to improve patient safety and quality, customer service, business process improvement, workforce management and disaster readiness. The 25 Most Wireless facilities are the ones that had the highest uptake of wireless applications, according to results from the AHA members survey conducted by HH&N.

Take a look at the 25 Most Wireless Hospitals after the jump (they are in alphabetical order). Continue >>

Is network security almost irrelevant?

A recent Frost & Sullivan report that extols the value of mobile technology for healthcare settings missed the mark when it pointed to network level security as the key to wireless health tools’ success.

“While mobile technology undoubtedly adds value to healthcare, the question is whether advances in technology pose a security threat, as information transmitted across a network should be accessible only to authorized users worldwide,” Frost & Sullivan analysts Jayashree Rajagopal and Luke Thomas wrote in a statement. “Their success depends on the network through which information is transmitted,” the analysts concluded.

“The various technologies used for the transmission of information in healthcare include the Public Switched Telephony Network (PSTN), Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), cellular, Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi) and Bluetooth. Most organizations choose technologies for different applications based on throughput, quality, cost and security. Among these, security is perceived and understood to be a major concern for all stakeholders involved in the healthcare sector. With the evolution of GSM to 3G, various security features have been enhanced and implemented to protect the integrity of the user.”

The idea that the security of the information rested exclusively on the network technologies struck Mike Foley, executive director of the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), as an odd assertion.

“Any application that is data based and will be transferring private medical information around isn’t going to rely on the network level security, it’s going to rely on the application level security,” Foley told mobihealthnews.

“We can’t have one security level over the cellular line and then another one over the backhaul,” Foley continued. “It needs to be consistent. The same goes for one level of security for Bluetooth and then another for cellular and so on — it needs to be at the application level to protect that data end-to-end. This idea of network-level security is almost irrelevant as a result.”

While ZDNet’s Dana Blankenhorn cited the perhaps extravagant costs required to quell wireless security paranoia, Foley added that usability might also be sacrificed by overindulging in security.

“Depending on what the wireless technology is and how you do it, adding security to a device might make it so heavy and complicated that no one can use it. I think there is a greater concern for ease-of-use versus security since those two are generally at polar opposites,” Foley said.

“Ease-of-use might be the prohibitive factor here as opposed to cost.”

Read on for the press release from Frost & Sullivan about its report on network-level security for wireless health. Continue >>

CNBC report highlights iPhone’s role in medicine

According to a report on CNBC, the Airstrip software, which Apple demonstrated at its most recent World Wide Developers Conference is now used by 2,000 doctors in 100 hospitals nationwide. Those users pay the company hundreds of dollars a month in subscription fees.

“With Airstrip, we provide physicians with real time, remote access to critical patient data, any time, anywhere, on their mobile device, with just a cell phone connection,” AirStrip President Dr. Cameron Powell told CNBC. “It allows the physicians to utilize that internet connection, which is the cell phone signal, to obtain these data… so from the patient safety standpoint, it is critical to be able to deliver these kinds of data to a doctor anywhere they have a cell phone connection.”

Check out the entire news clip from CNBC for a demo on AirStrip and a quick overview of medical iPhone apps.

iPhone app pulse check: Health & Fitness

Continue on to the wireless health app pulse check>>

In order to get a better sense of which mobile health applications are gaining consistent traction, we’ll be publishing iPhone app “pulse checks” regularly since Apple makes the popularity of their apps public and updates it in real-time. This week, we compiled a snapshot of the top ten most popular paid apps in the Health & Fitness category. Applications in this category typically skew to the consumer side, as opposed to the Medical category, which usually includes applications for health practitioners.

As you’ll see, the top paid apps in Health & Fitness include a wide array of subject areas — from workout routines and calorie counters to yoga instructions and more. Surprised any of these are the top apps for this week? Remember, people actually paid money for these applications — so this is by all accounts — where the money is this week in wireless health applications.

Mount Sinai seeks “Holy Grail” of mobile devices

Mount Sinai School of Medicine’s senior director for voice and data services, Andrew Pizzimenti isn’t sure that the “Holy Grail” of mobile devices for health practitioners has been created yet. During a virtual interview at the Cisco Live event held in San Francisco this week, Pizzimenti told Computer World that the device might be a smartphone, an e-book reader or a netbook or maybe none of the above.

Pizzimenti wants to equip his health practitioners with devices that allow them to access electronic patient records but also enable them to have one phone number instead of the several numbers they currently have between their various devices.

While many of the form factors he’s considering don’t have phones built in at all, there’s also the problem that the big EHR providers, like Cerner and Epic Systems, have yet to build applications for these platforms.

We recently wrote about an iPhone simulator app that would allow health practitioners to access Windows based applications like EHRs developed by Cerner, but those aren’t necessarily leveraging the mobile platform to the best of its ability.

Pizzimenti seems to be leaning toward an e-book form factor like the Kindle, but those don’t have phones built-in. Mount Sinai’s search for the Holy Grail of mobile devices is illustrative of the frustration many in the industry feel. However, it seems much more likely that the big EHR vendors will begin developing apps for existing smartphone platforms, than it does for e-book makers to add phone functionality.

For more check out the source article from Computer World.