In Barcelona, Spain right now much of the world's wireless industry is gathering for the Mobile World Congress event. This year there has been a noticeable uptick in news surrounding mHealth -- ahead of the announcements the GSM Association's Chief Marketing Officer published a contributed piece to the Financial Times that highlights the mHealth opportunity:

The greatest impact that wireless technologies can have in alleviating healthcare costs worldwide is by enabling connected health devices with wireless to help consumers better manage their chronic diseases, O'Hara writes. O'Hara believes that mHealth devices and services will enable providers to "diagnose disease, manage complications and intervene ahead of acute events, such as a heart failure, through remote monitoring" and also "improve compliance with treatment programs" like medication reminders, care giver alerts and smart pills. O'Hara also pointed to "locator devices for dementia patients" as a key example of mHealth.

"It will improve access to healthcare for patients in remote areas, and importantly, mHealth systems will allow caregivers to collect and analyse aggregated patient data and accelerate medical research innovations for better disease management," O'Hara writes. "All of these measures will have a direct impact on cost savings through reduced hospital admissions and utilisation. The GSMA and McKinsey predict that, through remote monitoring, we could see $175 billion  to $200 billion in annual savings for managing chronic diseases in OECD countries and Brazil, Russia, India and China alone."

For O'Hara's entire column, visit FT.com here