A blog covering the health/care ecosystem and people.

Adoption of mobile health (mHealth) apps will increase by 23% as a compound annual growth rate. according to a forecast from Arthur D. Little (ADL), featured in their report published in April 2011, Capturing Value in the mHealth Oasis. What is this mHealth Oasis? ADL notes that mobile network operators (MNOs — mobile phone companies) see gold in them thar’ health hills given unsustainable health economies the world over. However, ADL rightly points out that mobile health is just about as easy to conquer as any other aspect of health technology, full of minefields. ADL lays out the success factors for MNOs who want to engage

There’s cameraphone hacking that morphs the phone into a blood test device. Embrace Labs in India builds an incubator for $25. Micro- mobile payments are financing health care on the ground in emerging economies.   At SXSW in Austin, TX, on March 12, 2011, a globally experienced quartet of panelists shared their observations of working with highly constrained budgets in developing countries during the session, Mobile Health in Africa: What Can We Learn? The answer is: plenty. Doug Naegele of Infield Health moderated the panel, which included Patricia Mechael of the Center for Global Health and Economic Development at the Earth Institute, part of Columbia University; Josh

Remote health monitoring, which enables people to track health and daily living metrics when they are in one place and communicate those measures to another node via some communications platform, is not a new concept. Telehealth, telemedicine, consumer-facing health electronics like USB-ported blood pressure monitors, and some mobile apps can all fall under the broad umbrella of remote health monitoring. There are strong market forces converging to enable health citizens to connect to their providers, institutions, payors, health coaches, caregivers, and each other. Still, a balanced look under the remote health monitoring hood reminds us that old saw taught to me by colleagues

We technology market data junkies look to several thought leaders throughout the year for updates on their forecasts: one of these, for me, is Mary Meeker. Now with KPCB (who some of you know as Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Myers, the Silicon Valley venture capital company), Meeker has surveyed the morphing field of mobile and finalized her snapshot in Top Mobile Internet Trends, along with her colleague Matt Murphy.  Meeker’s Top 10 (drum roll, please) are that: 1. Mobile platforms have reached c4itical mass 2. Mobile is global 3. Social networking is accelerating growth of mobile 4. Time shifting is driving mobile use

Bet on it, live from Las Vegas at this week’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES): the new home health hub is digital, mobile and personal. More consumers are morphing TV and video watching from the “set” to the computer and mobile platforms, and DIYing more activities of daily living. Health (for both wellness and sickness care) is transforming in this process. This transformation is enabled through consumers’ adoption of technologies that they’re using in their daily lives for entertainment, household management, and communications. Broadband and wireless provide the infrastructure for health care to move beyond the doctor’s office and the hospital, so engaged patients who choose to do

The one issue in health politics that’s got bipartisan support is health care IT. While Republicans in the House may try to pick away parts of the Affordable Care Act, the HITECH Act — part of the 2009 stimulus package formally known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act — will stay intact, according to most industry analysts (including me). However, political agreement doesn’t equal market adoption. So forecasting what 2011 will mean for health information technology requires some deeper analysis of additional issues. For today’s Health Populi, take a look at my annual health IT forecast in California HealthCare Foundation‘s

The majority of Americans generally like the idea of remote home monitoring for health. 3 in 5 adults (62%) across all age groups say communication with doctors via home monitoring devices would improve their health. However, only 35% of people age 65 and over are interested in home health monitoring. Interest in remote home health monitoring decreases with age. The disconnect is that 90% of Americans age 65 and older have at least one chronic health condition, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Practice Fusion commissioned a survey from GfK Roper in November 2010 through the GfK Omnibus survey among 1,008 adults

6 in 10 U.S. households connected to the Internet via broadband in 2009, rising from 9% in 2001. In the U.S., the gap in the adoption of broadband between lower-income households and higher-income people is 33% — 61% of people with $25,000 to $50,000 household income connect to the Internet at home via broadband; that proportion is 94% for households with over $100,000 a year. Adoption gaps in broadband persist in the U.S. based on income, urban/rural location, race, education, and level of disability. Differences in socio-economic and geographic characteristics explain much of the broadband adoption gap associated with disability

Technology without people is pointless, Sara Redin of J. Boye told an audience today at the J. Boye 2010 conference in Aarhus today. I am in the land of LEGO, Denmark, attending the J. Boye 2010 conference. This meeting focuses on the online world – social media, web design, emerging technologies, the internet, and digital strategy. I’m taking part in the online health track, kicking off with a talk on participatory health. Redin told a story that resonated with me on several levels, personal and professional.  She recently took her son shopping for his birthday gift, and they made their way to

With peoples’ adoption of mobile phones, broadband, and apps for which they pay out-of-pocket, the new person-centered medical home is…the home. Policy wonks can wax lyrically and econometrically spin models about how to bend the health cost curve. But patients are the most under-utilized resource in the U.S. health system, as Dr. Charles Safran testified to Congress in 2004. In 2010, patients are getting more engaged as they DIY more at-home: photograph development, travel planning, stock trades, and home improvement. So health care comes home. A column written by Dr. Steven Landers of the Cleveland Clinic, featured in the October 20th 2010 issue of

Sex, drugs, rock and roll, Victoria’s secret bras manufactured with formaldehyde, motivating kids to move about more, and texting potential sex partners your latest STD test results: the 2010 Health 2.0 Conference in San Francisco was more about real, whole health and the person-patient than about cool new tech. Furthermore, the Health 2.0 Conference turned a lot of preconceptions on their head on October 7 and 8, 2010, in a standing-room–only ballroom at the Hilton Union Square. Who could have predicted that government employees would light the room up with high energy and innovative thinking more than a panel of illustrious

40% of U.S. consumers are willing to pay for remote health monitoring devices and services that would send their medical data to doctors, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Healthcare Unwired (PwC). 51% of consumers would not buy mobile health technology. The uses of mobile health most attractive to consumers are monitoring fitness and welling (cited by 20% of consumers), physician monitoring of health conditions (for 18% of people), and monitoring a previous condition (for 11%). 88% of physicians would like to see patients monitoring various parameters at home, their highest priorities being weight (65%), blood sugar (61%), vital signs like blood pressure (57%),

The Affordable Care Act (ACA), aka health reform, will move 32+ million Americans to the insured population, and looks to the primary care ‘front-end’ of health care delivery to take in these newly-covered patients. Today’s USA Today reports on the primary care shortage in America. How to reconcile the influx of new patients in the U.S. health system with the deficit of primary care providers? First, the Community Health Center is one part of the solution to the primary care supply challenge. Furthermore, CHCs are integrated into ACA, seen as a key component for redesigning American health care delivery to improve quality, lower

WellDoc received approval from the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) on August 2 2010 to market the company’s DiabetesManager system. This signals the regulator’s openness to mobile health solutions — a market moment that may usher in the new-and-improved era of personal health management. DiabetesManager uses the mobile phone as a platform for patients with Type 2 diabetes to gather, store and communicate personal health data such as blood glucose measurements; these data then feed into WellDoc’s algorithms that communicate personalized health coaching support back to patients in real-time. This process creates a closed-loop system that helps bolster patients’ decisions and behaviors throughout the day. Health

Social networking is key to women’s experience with the Internet, according to comScore’s report, Women on the Web: How Women are Shaping the Internet. Women spend 39% more time on social networks online than men do. comScore studied the “Mars versus Venus” differences between men and women online, discovering that gender stereotypes only go so far. The chart shows the differences between women and men and their e-retail relationships. In stereotypical “men” categories of computer hardware and software, and sports/outdoor, for example, men and women aren’t all that different — only a couple of percentage points difference at most for these categories. Health has

People with cancer can successfully manage their pain and depression through telephone contact with health providers and home monitoring, demonstrated by a clinical trial conducted among 405 patients in Indiana. The randomized trial findings are published in the July 14, 2010, issue of JAMA in, Effect of Telecare Management on Pain and Depression in Patients With Cancer. In the study, the Indiana Cancer Pain and Depression (INCPAD) trial assessed patients with pain, depression, and both depression and pain. Pain and depression are the most common physical and psychological symptoms in cancer patients, according to an AHRQ Evidence Report/Technology Assessment. These symptoms go largely untreated

1 in 2 global health citizens looks first to the Internet for advice to make health decisions; then, they look to doctors. This virtual tie for ‘first place’ in health information that supports health decision making is the New Second Opinion for at least one-half of the population, according to data gleaned through PricewaterhouseCoopers‘s Health Research Institute’s Global Consumer Survey. Traditional media, including print (newspapers and magazines) and broadcast (TV, radio) are go-to health information sources for about 1 in 4 health consumers. Social networking websites were found to be useful health information decision-support sources by 17% (say, nearly 1 in 5 people). Health

“‘Intent’ is the new demographic,” say the folks at Ruder Finn, the PR agency. What are people trying to achieve every moment of the digital day? According to the firm’s Mobile Internet Index, people are spending 2.7 hours a day on the mobile Internet. The Index survey studies what reasons people have for using their mobile phones. This isn’t about deep-dive education; instead, the mobile web is for connecting, quick transactions, life in-the-moment. Immediacy is the currency of the mobile web. The illustration shows Ruder Finn’s first iteration of the Intent Index, which analyzed peoples’ use of the Internet, broadly

The book Connected was recommended by my colleague, intellectual beacon and friend, Susannah Fox of the Pew Internet & American Life Project. In the midst of late nights analyzing health reform scenarios and medical microeconomics, I’ve made the time to read this book in its entirety. It’s been a worthwhile investment. Previously, the authors of Connected, Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler, found evidence on connectedness in health in the areas of obesity, smoking cessation, binge drinking, and other lifestyle behaviors that directly impact good or bad health.  This week, another team of innovative thinkers led by John Caccioppo from the

While Congressfolk and political pundits await the President’s speech tonight about why and how to reform the health system, patients on-the-street and in-their-homes are getting on with their daily lives dealing with chronic diseases. In the U.S., 75% of health care costs annually go to ‘manage’ chronic conditions. That’s about $1.7 billion of the $2.2 billion spent on health care in 2007. Not waiting for a government agency or health plan to provide a recipe for self-care, a cadre of highly engaged health citizens have taken care into their hands and minds. “Participatory health,” David Lester of Theranos told me,

While fiscal, billing and back office technologies universally proliferate home care, only 17% of agencies use some type of telehealth systems. However, 32% of agencies with over $6mm in annual revenue provide telehealth services. Thus, size matters when it comes to home health adopting telehealth technologies. These are just a couple of many important benchmarks published in the National Study on the Future of Technology and Telehealth in Home Care. Billed as the largest telehealth study in the history of home care, Philips unveiled this report in conjunction with the 13th annual American Telemedicine Association conference in Seattle. Philips partnered