Health IT

Mobile health companies need to make technology clinically relevant

The practical realities that mobile health applications need to meet if physicians are to embrace […]

The practical realities that mobile health applications need to meet if physicians are to embrace them peppered a panel discussion on mobile health at the Financial Times U.S. Healthcare and Life Sciences conference this week.

The pervasiveness of smartphones is helping to boost global mobile health market projections that the market will grow to $50 billion by 2020. There’s a lot of excitement from startups to medical device companies about the potential for these applications to be expanded from remote monitoring to patient-physician communication. But one of the biggest challenges for physician adoption, particularly of patient monitoring technology, will be its clinical relevance.

GE Healthcare CEO Tom Gentile pointed out that for mobile technology that transmits patient data, clinician feedback indicates that it has to be contextualized. It needs to be connected with the patient’s medical record and medical history. “It needs to have clinical relevance.”

Mike Ross, an area vice president for healthcare with Verizon Enterprise Solutions, talked about some of the feedback he has taken away from conversations with clinicians. The consensus was that technology has to do a better job and disruption is not such a good thing in healthcare.

“Exciting” and “terrifying” were the words Gentile used to describe the innovation taking place in the mobile health sector and the inevitable reckoning that will happen when consolidation takes place, particularly in the consumer space.

GE Healthcare has hedged its bets in mobile health. Although it’s developed mobile health tools, such as a mobile ultrasound device VScan, it also has an investment arm that backs startups. It makes venture investments to gain insight and learn about different applications.

Emphasizing the exciting potential in mobile health, Pfizer Chief Medical Officer Dr. Freda Lewis-Hall pointed out that by combining gaming and remote monitoring it raised the possibility that declines in cognitive function could be detected earlier. Pfizer is looking at the application of gaming technology to degenerative neurological conditions.

In another thought-provoking point, a member of the audience raised a question about wearables. With the push to transform healthcare from acute care to preventive care, will health plans use mobile health technology to ensure compliance by forcing members to wear them? For example, would wearables be used to demonstrate members have exercised a certain amount, or stayed away from cigarettes?

The panelists seemed to agree that this sort of thing would be voluntary — a great way to get some form of a discount but no more than that. It raises some interesting questions on how much privacy people would be willing to surrender for some extra money.

[Photo credit: GE Healthcare on Twitter]

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