Jon Mello is the chief operating officer at NavisHealth. He is a seasoned healthcare IT leader with more than 20 years of experience in the industry. Prior to NavisHealth, he served as executive vice president at Beacon Partners. He also served as the healthcare executive representing EMC Solutions at the EMC Corporation for 12 years, bridging the EMC portfolio of healthcare infrastructure solutions created through a coalition with VMware, Cisco and EMC. Earlier in his career, he held administrative appointments at several Harvard Teaching Hospitals in Boston. He received his bachelor's degree from Ithaca College and his Master's degree from Harvard University.

Q. What's the one promise of mHealth that will drive the most adoption over the coming year?

A. The promise of mHealth is to engage patients and give them more control over how they manage their healthcare and meet day-to-day healthcare needs. This is all about returning power to the consumer and meeting an overwhelming demand to bring better personal, mobile technology to an industry that has not yet met this challenge.

Research shows that 41 percent of patients are actually willing to switch doctors to gain online access to their own EHR data. Consumers use mobile technology in so many other aspects of their lives and they’ve fully embraced it. Remember, mHealth technology is not a disruptive technology – it’s just that providers and patients have never had access to it.

As mHealth technology starts to saturate the market, we’re going to see technology truly change the practice of medicine. The physician will no longer be a bottleneck and we’re going to see a real, dynamic, two-way conversation emerge – and this will create greater efficiencies in the entire system as well as a higher standard of patient care.

Q. What mHealth technology will become ubiquitous in the next 5 years? Why?

A. The type of mHealth technology that will become ubiquitous in the next five years will be the technology that is open to working with and collaborating with all software systems. The fundamental mHealth technology that will drive sweeping changes in this industry is already available. Technology adoption is today’s challenge.

The mHealth technology that will ultimately capture the market will need to connect physician’s offices with ambulatory clinics, hospitals and a range of other healthcare facilities. The challenge: the market doesn’t know what the market doesn’t know. And today, we’re seeing a whole range of mHealth systems emerge in silos, and none of them can communicate with all of the information sources that patients and doctors require. Consumers want information on their health regardless of where it lies, and the market needs to begin adopting a technology that meets this consumer demand to access vital health information from multiple software platforms, wherever this data resides.

Q. What's the most cutting-edge application you're seeing now? What other innovations might we see in the near future?

A. We’re seeing some amazing advancements in wearable sensors. Patients can benefit from some very sophisticated technology algorithms that can help diagnose medical problems faster than ever before. This is the true power of big data in a mobile environment and we’ve only scratched the surface of its potential. In the next five years, a smartphone will do so much more than just record data. It will begin interpreting data for the patient.

Smartphones can already take blood pressure readings, convey lab tests and scans and do EKGs. Such EKGs have been approved by the FDA, so if a patient goes into atrial fibrillation and calls the doctor, it is literally the smartphone that’s interpreting the data for the doctor. Even a few years ago, such a scenario would have been mind-boggling to most physicians. Welldoc's mobile app is FDA approved for the treatment of diabetes and billed to insurances similar to a medication.

Recently, engineers at UCLA even developed a kind of smartphone X-ray selfie. Operators use apps on their phone screens to snap X-rays like a handheld MRI device. Many scientists predict that every major organ will eventually be monitored by these kinds of smartphone technologies.

Q. What mHealth tool or trend will likely die out or fail?

A. mHealth products that cannot meet consumer demand for comprehensive information, speed and ease of use are at greatest risk of failing. There are currently more than 100,000 healthcare apps available on the market, including a range of fitness and wellness apps. However, these are mostly built in a silo and cannot access the full range of medical information that a patient needs. We are going to see a massive consolidation in the years ahead as consumers look for a turnkey mHealth solution on their smartphones.

Q. What mHealth tool or trend has surprised you the most, either with its success or its failure?

A. The biggest surprise to me is just how fast the mHealth market is growing – to the point where I don’t think hospital leadership has been able to absorb it. The problem is mHealth technology is still considered a disruptive technology even though it’s right here in front of us. This is the new generation of telemedicine, but hospital leadership has not caught up. However, even in its relative infancy, the consumer is demanding the use of mobile aps for healthcare even though the capabilities of these tools right now is very limited when you consider the significant possibilities.

Q. What's your biggest fear about mHealth? Why?

A. My biggest fear about mHealth is related to patient security and privacy. Many consider health data to be even more valuable than financial information, and it will be absolutely critical for the industry to take this threat very seriously. It’s vital that patient security and privacy issues play a major role in advancements and adoption of mHealth technology.

Q. Who's going to push mHealth "to the next level" – consumers, providers or some other party?

A. mHealth is a complex ecosystem that includes patients, physicians, providers, etc. Although significant demand is currently coming from patients, it’s the providers who will take mHealth to the next level – at least over the next few years. Providers will need to focus on adopting mobile apps and making sure they satisfy the “ubiquity” requirement, working on multiple platforms. Healthcare is a heavily regulated industry and the providers will be instrumental in driving mHealth to the next level.

Q. What are you working on now?

A. We’ve developed a mobile app that connects with the patient and hospital EHR. Our system easily connects to inpatient and outpatient EHRs, giving patients the tools they need to be more involved, engaged and empowered in their own healthcare.

As we continue to bring this product to market, we are especially focused on bridging the gap between providers and consumers. More specifically, we are working directly with the providers to explain the value of mHealth in creating significant efficiencies in the healthcare system and facilitating better doctor-patient communication to raise the standard of care.

We are also working on additional product advancements that include bringing additional languages to the app and functionality to allow family and friends to participate in the care of a patient, which is valuable in the case of a young or elderly patient. Our app is constantly reviewed for ease of use by consumers, which is absolutely critical to its success and the widespread adoption of mHealth.

Previous installments in our mHealth masters series: 

Why aren't we communicating better?

Duke's Ricky Bloomfield on the promise of HealthKit and SMART on FHIR

Why telehealth has a brighter future than apps