Improving Patient Safety through Remote Monitoring #mHealth

Today is the last day of the 2nd International mHealth Networking Conference. As a physician champion for the HCPLive Network, I'm excited to blog about some of the highlights from this meeting. You can also follow updates about the mHealth Networking Conference on HCPLive.com.

I attended a session titled, "Improving Patient Safety through Remote Monitoring." The presenter was Layne Haney, Senior VP of AirStrip Technologies. Physicians want real time and history remote access to critical patient data on their mobile devices. This is especially true in the intensive care and critical care setting where clinicians want to see the waveforms, EKGs, alerts/alarms, etc.

Security and Privacy in #mHealth (SMS, e-mail, etc.)

Today is the last day of the 2nd International mHealth Networking Conference. As a physician champion for the HCPLive Network, I'm excited to blog about some of the highlights from this meeting. You can also follow updates about the mHealth Networking Conference on HCPLive.com.

This morning, I attended a discussion about security and privacy in the world of mobile health. The speakers were Claudia Tessier, mHealth Initiative, and Patrick Enright, Sybase 365. The discussion initially focused around SMS, e-mail, and data encryption. Everyone is using SMS. Patients like using e-mail because it's easy to use, but e-mail isn't secure. A secure patient portal may be cumbersome for some people to use. SMS can be used in the world of mHealth if patients have a secure SMS client on their devices that will allow them to access encrypted text messages after they enter a PIN.

The #mHealth Challenge: Beyond the App

Today was the first day of the 2nd International mHealth Networking Conference. As a physician champion for the HCPLive Network, I'm excited to blog about some of the highlights from this meeting. You can also follow updates about the mHealth Networking Conference on HCPLive.com.

This afternoon, I attended a session titled, "The mHealth Challenge: Beyond the App." The speaker was Sandeep Shah, CEO & CIO of Skyscape. He spoke about the growing world of medical apps for smartphones. However, the app is not enough. So, how do we overcome this problem? He reviewed a few case studies where they found innovative ways to leverage a smartphone in the clinical setting.

For instance, suppose you're dealing with hypertension. Are physicians applying the latest clinical evidence? Do they know what types of labs they can order?  Looking at the nursing clinical pathway, we see there are multiple ways to integrate the mobile ecosystem on a smartphone.

Texting (SMS) in the world of mobile health care #mHealth

Today is Day #1 of the International mHealth Networking Conference here in San Diego. As a physician champion for the HCPLive Network, I'm excited to blog about some of the highlights from this meeting. You can also follow updates about the mHealth Networking Conference on HCPLive.com.

This afternoon, I attended a session titled, "Mobile Technology and Social Media in Clinical Trials and Healthcare Programs."  The presenters were from a company called Exco InTouch (a company basked in the UK) and they reviewed a few different mHealth case studies:

Interactive SMS solution: Travel vaccinations

• A pharmaceutical company client: GSK
• Used SMS plus newspaper ads to educate Chicago-area consumers about travel vaccination
• The consumer sent a text message, indicating the vacation destination. Then, the consumer received an SMS indicating where he/she could go to receive travel vaccines.
• This generated over 3,500 inbound text messages. 50% of those who received vaccination information requested the nearest clinic location. 

Healthcare meets Wellness: The Critical Role of Mobile Services #mHealth

I'm now in San Diego and I'm attending the 2nd International mHealth Networking Conference. As a physician champion for the HCPLive Network, I'm excited to blog about some of the highlights from this meeting. You can also follow updates about the mHealth Networking Conference on HCPLive.com.

Today's keynote was presented by John Mattison MD, Chief Medical Information Officer, Kaiser Permanente. He spoke about "Healthcare meets Wellness: The Critical Role of Mobile Services."

Dr. Mattison started by polling the audience with some trivia:
Have you heard of clinical ontology (not oncology, but ontology)? How about mirror neurons?
Did you know that 30 countries have visited Kaiser Permanente to see their integrated health IT model?

The mobile platform is a disruptive technology that will give consumers more control over their own health and wellness. We're living in the world where consumer-cetric care is one of the key opportunities in mHealth. In the Kaiser Permanente network, there are 30,000 secure e-mails exchanges between patients and physicians. Such communication improves the management of blood pressure (published in BMJ).

Are consumers using mobile health apps? They're using them, but are they resulting in sustainable health changes in areas like weight loss, diabetes management, etc.?  What's the "behavioral secret sauce" to help patients improve their health? As patients engage in different types of social networks, they'll find support for their specific conditions. This way, patients will engage in behavioral change that is specific to the problems they may be facing.

There are 3 targets in quality improvement:
1. Treat to target (clinical)
2. Communicate to target (modality)
3. Escalate to target (machine to people)
Capture and implement individual preferences for each with adaptive learning utilities.

Healthcare Unwired: Delivering Healthcare Anywhere #mHealth

I'm now in San Diego and I'm attending the 2nd International mHealth Networking Conference. As a physician champion for the HCPLive Network, I'm excited to blog about some of the highlights from this meeting. You can also follow updates about the 2nd mHealth Networking Conference on HCPLive.com.

This morning, Christopher Wasden, Managing Director, Strategy & Innovation Practice, PricewaterhouseCoopers gave a presentation titled, "Healthcare Unwired: New Business Models to Deliver Care Anywhere."

Here are from snippets from the PwC Health Research Institute (HRI) report titled, Healthcare Unwired: New Business Models to Deliver Care Anywhere:

• The consumer market for mobile/remote monitoring is estimated to be $7.7 to $43 billion. It's $7.7 billion if consumers are paying out-of-pocket. It's $43 billion if we get additional payers involved.
  
• 40% of consumers said they would be willing to pay for remote monitoring devices and a monthly service fee to send data automatically to their physicians. 
• The early adopters of mHealth are not the patients who are have multiple chronic conditions. The early adopters tend to be young, healthy men (we love our gadgets, don't we?)
• The growth area for mHealth is in preventive health and wellness.

There are 3 business models to consider if we wish to effectively deliver healthcare everywhere:

1. Consumer-centric products and services.
2. Operational/clinical
3. Infrastructure

Those new business models will have different goals around:

• Transaction
• Knowledge vs. Intelligence
  
• Communication
• Integration

One of the case studies focuses around pain management. Meridian Health collaborated with Cypak and Best Buy to use iMPak's Health Journal for Pain (an electronic diary for patients). They found that patients were able to record and communicate their pain with their providers while they were at home.