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Now a choice: Who pays for mHealth texts?
 Every day more than 3.5 billion are sent. Some 1 trillion were exchanged throughout last year. Yes, the humble 160 character text message remains a considerably popular means of communication.
Disagree? We send more texts than we make calls: A Nielsen Mobile report last year found that U.S. mobile phone users sent an average of 357 texts per month in the second quarter of 2008 versus an average of 204 calls. So, remember: These are texting devices, not phones.
“Consumers are increasingly relying on texting as a form of communications,” CTIA stated recently. “It is quick, easy and affordable. Carriers offer consumers a multitude of text messaging options and we encourage individuals to work with their provider to ensure they’re on the best plan.”
CTIA also noted that only about 10 percent of wireless users in the U.S. pay-per-text message, most text users either have a bundled text message plans (a bucket of 200 for the month, for example) or have an unlimited plan for text messages.
The 10 percent of wireless users in the U.S. who pay per text, don’t need to be a worry for those healthcare service providers looking to leverage text messaging for appointment reminders, medication reminders or other healthcare-related missives. Those wireless users with a limited number of text messages in their messaging allowance should be of no concern either.
Premium text messaging company, mBlox, has just offered a new service called Free to End User, which makes it easier for service providers to ensure their customers won’t get billed for that text message they send them. So who pays now? Just the sender.
For example, if the staff at a doctor’s office wanted to offer a text message-based appointment reminder service to their patients, they might choose to use Free to End User to pay for the cost of the text messages, instead of having their patients absorb the cost. After all, if the reminders work, it might be worth covering the nominal fee to get more patients to sign up for the service.
Of course, with every step forward comes another challenge: How do you let them know that this text — just this one — is free?
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Analyst: mHealth needs more input from CE
The Principal at Changeist, Scott Smith, recently discussed wireless health trends with mobihealthnews in an interview that covered everything from long term drivers of wireless health to wireless carrier liability. Smith has consulted with large consumer technology companies for the past 15 years, and most recently began identifying emerging tech markets for investment. Wireless health has recently become one such market.
Prior to founding Changeist in 2007, Smith served as a futurist and director for Washington, DC-based foresight firm Social Technologies, helping respected brands such as Nokia, Honda, P&G, Kellogg’s and McDonald’s understand and plan for new consumer behaviors and the technologies that will impact their lives in the future. Prior to this, Smith led consumer and business research and consulting practices for the Yankee Group, Current Analysis and Jupiter Communications, in London, Washington, DC and New York, respectively.
MobiHealthNews: When did you begin examining the wireless health opportunity and what trends are driving interest among the big consumer tech companies?
Smith: Actually, in doing some more in-depth sort of future-facing research four or five years ago, working for a large mobile phone company, we started looking at three, five, ten years into the future for this industry as well as looking at other markets around the world to try to understand what other applications were going to emerge that they should take under consideration for developing markets. What’s coming after what comes next? Looking at those areas there are a number of different directions that you can begin to examine.
One is looking at demographic change. The fact that we are seeing an aging population more or less worldwide with very few exceptions, national populations are growing older, the global population is growing older. Aging means health concerns. That presents in the long term an enormous opportunity for the application of technology, in particular mobile technology. On a more focused level, we were looking at countries like Japan and Korea that were already further ahead in developing health applications for mobile platforms and seeing even there, whether it’s basic simple things like blood glucose testing, heart rate monitoring or very simple wireless transmission of vital data. It was being implemented in handsets and devices in those markets. Those were all trip wires and indicators that this was going to become a more significant issue closer in to this time frame now. Continue >>
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| Continua certifies Roche BGM device reader
Diabetes management tools just got a step closer to medical device interoperability.
A few hours after news broke that A&D Medical’s Bluetooth-enabled blood pressure cuff and Bluetooth-enabled weight scale had received Continua Health Alliance’s stamp of interoperability, the organization announced that Roche Diagnostics’ Accu-Chek Smart Pix Device Reader, which currently interfaces with blood glucose meters and insulin pumps to transfer data from the devices to the user’s computer, gained Continua certification for USB connectivity.
The Smart Pix device connects to the computer with a USB cord but it interacts with the medical devices via infrared. Once the data transfers to the computer a report appears in the user’s default Internet browser to be saved later, printed out or simply viewed on screen. Roche says the system helps diabetics make timely and well-informed decisions about day-to-day self-care.
While the Roche announcement is not a wireless health move, some of Roche Diagnostics’ educational software under the Accu-Chek umbrella has been included in MYLEstone Health’s popular iPhone application, Glucose Buddy. Roche is also on Continua Health Alliance’s board of directors, so clearly it is carefully putting together the necessary components for a robust suite of wireless health products.
For more on Roche’s Continua announcement, visit the Continua site here.
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| Continua certifies Bluetooth BP monitor, scale
The Continua Health Alliance just certified two new Bluetooth-enabled medical devices for interoperability: San Jose-based A&D Medical’s Bluetooth blood pressure monitor and weight scale. Continua’s stamp of interoperability means that the devices will work with other Continua certified products, which enables users to know at the point of purchase that their medical devices will be able to connect with each other.
Continua now counts more than 200 companies in its alliance, which is led by Intel’s Rick Cnossen. Previous to this announcement Continua had certified the USB and Bluetooth-enabled versions of Nonin’s pulse oximeter. The additions of the two A&D Medical products doubles Continua’s certified product count, which now stands at four devices. Continua’s board of directors includes representatives from Cisco, Intel, Medtronic, Kaiser Permanente, Panasonic, Partners Healthcare, Philips, PwC, Roche Diagnostics, Samsung, Sharp, Qualcomm, Ascension and CA. Continue >>
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| Free to end user mHealth text messages
Text messaging (SMS) and premium SMS technology solutions provider mBlox announced a new offering today called Free to End User (FTEU) text messaging, that could create a clear go to market strategy for wireless healthcare companies looking to leverage text messages in their offerings. While virtually every phone has text messaging capabilities, not all end users have unlimited texting plans. Others either don’t want to pay for text messaging at all or have a limited number of texts per month.
Medication adherence programs that make use of text messages can now pay for their end users’ messages upfront or build it into the cost of the medical service instead of making the end user pay for it as part of their monthly wireless bill. Of course, this billing mechanism also makes it easier for health plans to pay for a text messaging-based mHealth service.
mBlox is no start-up, the company was founded in 1999 and has since worked with more than 500 carriers in over 180 countries. mBlox processes more than 2.5 billion messages per year.
The company’s Free to End User text messaging service is initially aimed at financial institutions that use text message reminders for recouping collections from their customers, but clearly healthcare service providers could leverage the service, too.
“Banks who use FTEU text messaging have reported up to a 117 percent improvement in collections over voice-only communications,” comments Alan Berrey, vice president, Market Development, Text and Mobile Messaging for SoundBite Communications, an mBlox customer. “They have also experienced more than a 10 percent reduction in collection roll rates and similar reductions in collection costs. Many of SoundBite’s clients are using FTEU text messaging, including six of the nation’s largest banks.”
Here are a few programs or pilots that should consider whether their end user should be paying for their health-related text messages, or if they should be built-in to the program service fees: Continue >>
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| WebMD touts Medscape Mobile, revenue
Last week WebMD highlighted its newest iPhone offering, Medscape Mobile during its quarterly investor call, which included some interesting metrics for the company’s advertising revenues, CME program growth and general Web traffic numbers. Given the comments about Medscape Mobile’s success to date, it seems like the company is looking toward its mobile app for future revenue growth.
“On the mobile front, earlier this month, we launched Medscape Mobile. It’s our first mobile application for physicians. Medscape Mobile provides the most comprehensive drug information clinical reference tools, medical news and continuing medical education on a mobile device,” Wayne Gattinella, CEO, president and director of WebMD told investors on the company’s recent quarterly call. “Launched initially for the iPhone and iPod Touch, it’s the only medical application to deliver specialty-specific news and medical education that leverages our assets from Medscape’s award-winning professional editorial team. I’m really pleased to tell you that after just two weeks, Medscape Mobile has already become the number one most downloaded medical application on Apple’s App Store.”
A representative from WebMD confirmed to mobihealthnews this week that (like everyone else) the company is not exactly sure how specifically Apple’s AppStore ranks the most downloaded applications in a given category. While downloads seems to be the obvious metric, the time frame Apple uses (most downloaded during the past 24 hours, during the past week, or during the past month?) is still undisclosed.
A representative from WebMD confirmed to mobihealthnews this week that (like everyone else) the company is not exactly sure how specifically Apple’s AppStore ranks the most downloaded applications in a given category. While downloads seems to be the obvious metric, the time frame Apple uses (most downloaded during the past 24 hours, during the past week, or during the past month?) is still undisclosed.
“New development is underway to launch new product enhancements, as well as additional mobile platforms for Medscape Mobile, including the BlackBerry later this year,” Gattinella said. ”Our consumer iPhone app that launched last November is also yielding fast growth with now over 750,000 download. We see the mobile market as an important opportunity for future growth as we leverage the strength of whether these brand across multiple consumer and physician platforms.” Continue>>
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| Qualcomm CEO confirms LifeComm shut down
At the recent Qualcomm Smart Services Leadership Summit, Qualcomm CEO Dr. Paul Jacobs confirmed our recent report that the company’s healthcare focused MVNO LifeComm had become irrelevant. Mobihealthnews broke the news that LifeComm was shutting down two weeks ago.
“After working for a few years to get the venture capital lined up, we were hit with the economic downturn. In the meantime, operators have done these open initiatives,” Jacobs told FierceWireless during an on-site interview. “Lifecomm as an MVNO became irrelevant. Events overtook it. Now we have things like the West Wireless Health Institute that is more along our lines. We are enabling things to be end to end.
“We still think this is a growth opportunity. We think wireless will be embedded in everything. I believe that vision, and the user interface will be accessible over the phone. The phone will act as a centralized server. … Now the focus is on app-specific wireless technologies that will be integrated to the phone,” Jacobs explained.
For the entire interview with Jacobs, check out this article over at FierceWireless
Related Articles:
Qualcomm pulls the plug on LifeComm
Qualcomm: LifeComm to offer glucometer phone, medallion
Usability, Style & Cost: Making mHealth Really Work
CardioNet eyes service provider business model
Funding chases clinicians, not consumers
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| The states of clinical trial-related iPhone apps
The market for clinical trials-focused mobile applications just got competitive and complicated. During the past week two new contenders announced applications to rival the buzzworthy StopWatch Media app, “Clinical Trials,” which has long been the only iPhone application to offer clinical trial data.
Healogica just announced its app, interestingly called Clinical Trials 2.0, which costs only $0.99, a far cry from Stopwatch Media’s original $24.99 pricetag and even its recently dropped $9.99 pricepoint. Does $0.99 still sound like too much? Well, Healogica announced that it would be donating half the proceeds from the purchase of its app to the Pancreative Action Network in recognition of Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ continuing battle with pancreatic islet cell cancer.
Another app on the horizon is TrialX, which looks to match users up with the potential clinical trials based on their personal health record information in Microsoft HealthVault and Google Health. Certainly ambitious.
Take a look through this slide show for some screen grabs and videos of these apps in action. Continue >>
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| AllOne Mobile: The Web is not enough
“People are now texting more than they are speaking on their mobile phones and this has to tell us something in the healthcare industry.” said Frank Avignone, Senior Director, AllOne Mobile at the World Healthcare Congress’ Wireless Health event in Boston last week. Avignone noted that wireless only households (homes with no landline phones) now make up more than 18 percent of U.S. households. (Some studies peg the percentage at north of 20 percent.)
“When we first started down this path of wireless for healthcare there was a lot talk about the devices not being advanced enough or that there were not enough people who own mobile phones that can manage [these services],” Avignone said. “Now there are about 303 million people in the U.S. and 271 million wireless subscriptions. If you take into account the number of people in ICU who cannot use a mobile phone and the number of children — I have a 7-year-old who can out-text me with her eyes closed — that can’t use a mobile phone that’s an impressive number: That’s almost two devices for every man, woman and child in this country. That’s a channel we can see growing and continuing to grow not just here but around the world.”
Avignone also pointed to what he described as “an unofficial study from New York and New Jersey” that found that five in seven Medicaid patients carry a smartphone. ”Talk about a population we can save some money with,” Avignone said. Continue >>
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| Another Google Health app: CMO
This past weekend, iPhoneDevCamp, a not-for-profit organization that gathers regularly to develop applications for iPhone and iPod Touch, highlighted two healthcare-related iPhone app prototypes called Nurse Brain and Chief Medical Officer.
Nurse Brain, which won the “Highest Potential iPhone Start-up Idea” award at the event, is a “communicator for nurses to hand-off important data about patients during shift change.” The app team said it was inspired by Kaiser Innovation teams, IDEO and the nurses at Kaiser to create the application.
Another health-related app called Chief Medical Officer won the “Best iPhone Health App” category at the event. ChiefMedical Officer gives patients access to their Google Health files from their iPhone. The application aims to enable users to gather their medical records and prescriptions in one place. The app re-organizes some of the information found in Google Health to make it easier to use on the mobile platform. It also includes medical search and some geo-location services. Once completed, the group plans to release the app as an open source project.
There are already a couple of iPhone apps that allow users to connect to their Google Health accounts: The iPhone app Health Cloud leverages Google Health’s API to let users access to the information they have entered into their Google Health personal health record. Like the other Google Health readers for mobile phones, however, this one only allows users to access the information in a readable format; Health Cloud does not allow you to update your Google Health record. More
Google Health back end analytics partner Anvita, formerly SafeMed, also developed an app called Mobile Viewer that lets users access information from their Google Health accounts, but the app is only available for Google-powered Android phones. More
Continue reading for a video clip of Chief Medical Officer in action: Continue >>
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| Which smartphone owns the HC market?
Software Advice put together a helpful feature called, Which Smartphone Will Own the Healthcare Market? Software Advice’s Chris Thorman told mobihealthnews that the site sent its survey out to 700 people and received responses from 70 people via the online survey. Here are just some of the graphs that the group put together:
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| Shorts: Kaiser; WSJ on mHealth; ANSI RFID
Kaiser Permanente’s innovation centers: The Sacramento Bee has a feature on Kaiser Permanente’s various innovation centers, which test a number of wireless health technologies. The San Leandro center, for example, is outfitted with patient rooms, mock-ups of workstations, operating rooms, and a “living room” that includes demonstrations of home health products.
“By 2015, the home will become the hub of care,” said KP Senior Technology Manager Sean Chai. More
Wireless health feature in WSJ rehashes old news: The Wall Street Journal has a feature that highlights companies in wireless healthcare, but really just retreads old ground. The comment section, however, includes a worthwhile discussion: “In the medical system, one party is demanding services, while another is paying, while another is profiting. No technology is going to change that triangle,” one reader wrote.
“The problem is not increased cost,” another wrote in. “it’s increased care resulting in increase cost. Improving our health care requires constant investments in new technology to solve newly understood problems.” More
ANSI approves a healthcare standard for RFID: The American National Standards Institute and the Health Industry Business Communications Council recommended that 13.56 Mhz High Frequency (HF) be adopted for healthcare item-level tagging, because its range is less likely to cause interference (EMI) with other medical devices. More
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| The real top ten iPhone medical apps
As we have noted before, because of the iTunes AppStore’s popularity, trying to pin down the Top Ten Free Apps in a given category is like trying to shoot a moving target. That said, the headline of this post is a bit tongue-in-cheek, because by tomorrow or even by tonight this list will probably be dated, too. For the sake of taking a pulse check on the medical app offerings for the iPhone and iTouch, however, we will forge ahead.
Just like our list from March, the current, most popular medical apps list is dominated by well-known medical software publishers like Medscape, Epocrates, Skyscape and others. In the past few months, however, Medscape has unseated Epocrates as the current top free medical app for the iPhone platform. Newcomers like uHear have also made an impression after considerable media buzz surrounded their launch.
Remember: These are just the apps that happen to be getting the most downloads currently. Here are the real top ten iPhone medical apps according to Apple’s list of most downloaded ones.
Be sure to let us know if they deserve the distinction. Continue >>
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The Inaugural Medical Device Connectivity Conference & Exhibition
September 10-11, Boston
This innovative conference and exhibition focuses on the integration of medical devices and information systems. The conference will feature in-depth coverage of strategy and implementation as well as legal/regulatory issues. Keynote speakers include: Tim Gee, Medical Connectivity Consulting and Julian Goldman, MD, Partners HealthCare Biomedical Engineering.
Register here
ATA Mid-Year Meeting
Sept. 24-25, Palm Springs
The Third Annual ATA Mid-Year meeting is one great meeting combining two great tracks & showcasing the latest in products and services:
Track I:
Cutting Edge and Off-The-Shelf Technology: Making the Right Decisions
Track II:
4th Annual Pediatric Telehealth Colloquium
Register here
MobiHealthNews PRESENTS:
Everywhere Healthcare
October 8, San Diego
With today’s wireless networks, the doctor is always in. While connecting patients to caregivers has never been easier, the search for the right business models for wireless health devices and services has just begun.
Don’t miss your appointment at the MobiHealthNews Presents: Everywhere Healthcare event during International CTIA WIRELESS I.T. & Entertainment 2009!
OPEN TO ALL REGISTERED ATTENDEES! There is NO separate registration fee for this event and it is included in ALL registration packages. Please see registration form for details.
Register here
CTIA WIRELESS I.T. & Entertainment 2009
October 6-9, San Diego
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 here
Health 2.0
October 6-7, San Francisco
With nearly a hundred speakers and plenty of new healthcare demos and technologies on display on stage and in the exhibit hall, you’ll get a sweeping overview of the ways that information technology and the web are changing healthcare. We’ll be looking at the “traditional” Health 2.0 areas like vertical search, online social networks and tools for consumers. But the conference will also be focusing on how new technologies are connecting patients and clinicians, and examining the impact of Health 2.0 technologies on patients lives.
Register here
6th annual Connected Health Symposium
October 21-22, Boston
Up from Crisis: Overhauling Healthcare Information, Payment and Delivery in Extraordinary Times
hosted by the Center for Connected Health at Partners HealthCare
Healthcare will have its renaissance when it moves beyond the hospital and clinic and into the day-to-day lives of patients and consumers. The Connected Health Symposium asks how information technology — cell phones, computers, the Internet and other tools — can help people manage chronic conditions, maintain health and wellness, and age with independence.
Use invitation code mobihealth to receive a $100 discount!
Register here
TEDMED 2009
October 27-30,
San Diego
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 here
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