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:
Smartphone Penetration vs. User Group
Which Apps Are You Currently Using on Your Smartphone? Keep reading>>
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
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.
Want to read stories as soon as they are posted? Follow MobiHealthNews on Facebook.
On Twitter? Be sure to follow MobiHealthNews for up-to-the-minute news and industry analysis.
Wireless healthcare is, ultimately, a consumer play. That was one key message built-in to both West Wireless Health Institute’s Dr. Eric Topol’s presentation and CardioNet’s Director of Business Development Aaron Goldmuntz’s presentation this week at the Qualcomm Smart Services Leadership Summit.
There are currently 1.2 million people who use mobile fitness products to track their vital signs while working out, Topol noted. It starts with fitness, but use cases for health and medical wireless health services are set to become increasingly popular. A recent ABI report found that 90 percent of the current wearable wireless sensor market is dominated by the fitness industry. By 2014, the market will swell to 400 million units, thanks in large part to growing use of sensors for healthcare and medical uses.
CardioNet may be one company that helps lead that change.
While we have long considered CardioNet’s MCOT solution a clinician-facing diagnostic tool, Goldmuntz stressed throughout his presentation that the end user, the patient, is still one of its key customers. CardioNet’s system must be comfortable for the patient to wear and easy for them to use. In the end, of course, the system is also designed to help them get well, too.
Wireless remote monitoring of arrhythmia may not be quite like the empowering experience that many consumer-facing wireless health services promise to bring to market in the coming years, but CardioNet has its eye on wireless solutions that address everything from diabetes and sleep apnea to hypertension management. While the company may not expand into those areas for years to come, it certainly points to a growing consensus that the consumer side of wireless health looks to be a robust opportunity.
The overt stress at Qualcomm’s event on the consumer opportunity in wireless health was not lost on me, especially since last week I noted in this column that it seemed like funding dollars were only chasing clinician-facing wireless health start-ups right now. While last week’s conclusion stands as a snapshot of the wireless health industry today, the greater opportunity clearly remains in leveraging wireless health services to empower and enable patients to take better care of their own health.
If you disagree, be sure to check out our coverage of Cisco’s Dr. Danny Sands’ keynote from the World Health Congress’ Wireless Health event in Boston this past week. Sands illuminated the (many) challenges facing those looking to get doctors to add another “whiz bang” gadget to their already comically-crowded Batman utility belt.
So while the venture capitalist’s focus may be on clinical products with a good chance at attaining reimbursement and the majority of wireless sensors are being used for fitness applications and services instead of consumer-facing medical ones, the space between the “clinical” and the “fitness” opportunities for wireless health is still very much the sweet spot for this emerging industry.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that the medical costs of treating obesity-related diseases topped $147 billion in 2008, according to a recent report in the Wall Street Journal.
During the past decade that cost of treating obesity effectively doubled: The medical costs associated with obesity were pegged at $74 billion in 1998. The number of obese people in the U.S. rose 37 percent between 1998 and 2006. In 2006 obesity costs accounted for about 9.1 percent of all medical costs. Obese people also spent about 42 percent more than people of normal weight on medical costs in 2006, which makes for a difference of $1,429. Most of those costs were from prescription drugs.
The CDC said that the average American is about 23 pounds overweight and consumers about 250 more calories a day than the average American did two or three decades ago.
The CDC’s budget for nutrition, physical activity and obesity programs is only about $43 million for this year.
At Qualcomm’s Smart Services Leadership Summit in San Diego this week, the West Wireless Health Institute’s Dr. Eric Topol noted that we now have uncovered the the genetic contribution to non-syndromic human obesity. Keep reading>>
“It is really not all about the technology,” explained Dr. Daniel Sands, senior medical informatics director for Cisco Systems, during his keynote at the World Health Care Congress’s Wireless Health event this week. “My talk is entitled ‘It’s not about the technology, confessions of a healthcare technologist.’”
“So it’s a first,” Sands said. “Everything we do is a first. So, we are excited by the fact that we are implementing technology, that’s really exciting but you know what? So what. It’s OK, it’s cool, and it’s great. That’s as far as it goes. In fact, if we want to succeed at what it is that we are doing, we are going to have to do more than just be the first cool whiz bang thing. And that’s really what we would focus on. Ultimately, it’s this that we have got to think about — if we have a technology, something that we are trying to do. It shouldn’t be about the technology it should be about solving these problems. Thinking about all of the stakeholders in healthcare starting with the clinician and the patient in the center. Then, of course, the other people in the ecosystem: public health agencies, health authorities, hospital practices, life sciences and the payers. We need to think about how we are helping this whole ecosystem, not just how we are going to create widgets.”
While he didn’t use the word, Sands clearly believes there to be a lot of hype about wireless health. His keynote at the WiHealth event in Boston began with a rant against fetish-sizing technology for technology’s sake but ended with a series of thoughtful challenges that face every company looking to gain a foothold in the emerging wireless health industry. Keep reading>>
