"Nobody walks into a doctor's office anymore without a cell phone," Neil Calman, co-founder and President, Institute for Family Health, said during the opening plenary session at the Health 2.0 conference here in Boston. "Even the 80-year-olds have cell phones now. Connectivity is not the problem," he said. 

Calman is right to note that almost everyone has a mobile now. As we learned at CTIA Wireless earlier this month, the wireless penetration rate in the U.S. is approaching 90 percent. As of last December 87 percent of people in the U.S. had mobile phones, but I wonder how many of the remaining 13 percent are on the older side of the age spectrum. Just guessing but I bet it's most.

That said, Calman's anecdotal evidence that the 80+ crowd have mobiles now too is very promising for mHealth services. At least now there's a reputable (albeit eminence over evidence) source to point to when the naysayers claim that "mHealth services are best for older people and they don't use mobile phones". 

Calman went on to describe a presentation he recently attended that included a flow chart diagram of the healthcare system with a number of spokes coming out from a hub in the center. The doctor was one of the spokes, Calman said. The patient was one of the spokes, too. So, what was in the middle? A computer.

"We need to redraw the national care structure and put the patient in the center," Calman said. "The patient cannot be a spoke. What I want to do is redraw the diagram with patients in the center. If I can accomplish that -- even a little bit -- I'll be satisfied."