Have an App(Y) new year

Advancements in mobile technology have opened up a new gateway in the healthcare industry. It is believed that accessing health data form a mobile device will be a norm in the upcoming years and it is estimated that around 21,000 health-related applications exist for smart phones and tablets. Amongst the overall mobile applications, revenues generated from the medical and healthcare & fitness categories each contribute two per cent in the total number of applications.

HEALTHCARE APPS
Health apps can not only perform relatively simple tasks, such as counting calories, but also help consumers and healthcare professionals track, monitor, and share personal-health information for a variety of increasingly complex conditions, including heart failure, respiratory illness, and mental illness. For this reason, health apps represent a great tool for informing and supporting patients in the self-management of their health and wellbeing.

Currently, simple apps that are easily downloadable for smart phones or tablets constitute the majority of mHealth-related apps. They require relatively unsophisticated tools and calculators with lower levels of security and analytics than apps intended for healthcare professionals. A persistent trend is that most healthcare apps track workouts or diets. Far fewer are dedicated to real health problems, such as chronic condition management.

In the current market, there is an opportunity to integrate personalised apps with electronic medical records. Popular applications include ones where medical tracking is combined with doctors’ feedback and personalised coaching. These applications help in sharing medical data between patients and healthcare professionals for complex medical conditions such as heart failure, respiratory illness and mental illness. Most applications include vital monitoring systems that have meters plugged into mobile devices that help in serving diagnostic functions.

Applications providing translation, visual data for easier interpretations, and web based educational material are also popular. Most of these applications are free or low cost.

HELPING WITH SURGERY
There are already numerous applications that exist that help medical professions and patients manage their conditions. For example, DrawMD from Visible health enables doctors to clarify complex medical and surgical procedures. The application covers anesthesiology, critical care, cardiology, otolaryngology, female pelvic surgery, general and vascular surgery, ob/gyn, orthopedics, and urology. It is a free application on the iPad.

The application Visible Body is available for Apple iPad, iPhone and Google Android and offers information on body systems, organs, vasculature and nerves. It also gives detailed, anatomically 3-D models of more than 2,500 structures & definitions.    

EZ Derm application for the iPad allows the dermatologist to make notes helping in diagnoses information, workup algorithm and treatment method.

Asthmasense for the Apple iOS or the android phone helps patients track their breathing and manage medications with symptoms, medication history and breathing function meter readings. It helps in setting reminders and setting alerts when asthma is poorly controlled. 

PATIENT SAFETY
There are many apps where the patient and the physician can keep check on the patient’s status. A mobile application like medication reminder keeps a record of the pills taken and notes the next timing for the pills to be consumed. It also notifies if a patient is low on pills, and based on the location, directs the patient to the nearest pharmacy. Such applications reduce the burden on the patient, improve patient engagement, increase transparency of cost, and makes it easier to obtain medication. With patients managing their health effectively with mobile applications, patients safety should rise.    

Other applications that are helping transform patient care include scheduling appointments, informing if the doctor is running late, helping monitor side effects, and helping patients follow their care plans accurately.

BARRIERS
Despite the promising future of mobile health applications, there are several issues that have to be addressed before patients and doctors can truly enjoy the benefits of mobile health.

Achieving sustained health outcome depends on consumer engagement with health treatments. Many chronic conditions require careful adherence to voluntary behaviours, such as monitoring nutrition, managing weight, and exercising healthy choices. The best piloted programmes often fail because these lifestyle changes are hard to follow consistently over a continued period of time.

Another obstacle comes from physicians who may not encourage or even dissuade patients from the use of mHealth apps. Clinicians fear that as consumers become empowered with information about price, quality, services, and wait times, doctors will lose control over revenues and how medicine is practiced.

They are afraid that the traditional role of the doctor as a guide to health treatments will weaken as consumers rely on mobile health apps or access websites on their smart phones to direct their own healthcare.

While tablets and smart phones combined with mobile apps have the potential to improve patient care, apps should provide some clinical decision-making data to truly add any value to the quality of care. However, without quality clinical research to back them up, they may be a waste of IT resources.

Nevertheless, with telehealth and at-home care for the aging emerging as new care delivery models, rising adoption of mobile devices and advancing mobile technology, the demand for mHealth apps will continue to grow.

But there is a lot to consider when using telehealth and mobile apps for Europe’s elderly population. Concerns exist regarding new care delivery models, mass adoption of mobile devices and advanced technology. Recent studies have indicated that the elderly population has difficulties in using mobile applications – for example, making sense of small fonts, thin lines and scrolling. People suffering from a weakening of vision, cognition and motor skill could also negatively affect their use of mobile applications. 

MARKET POTENTIAL
Future smartphones are likely to be way cleverer than now, with capabilities to offer information based on location, discernment and prominence. This would revolutionise the manner in which patients receive information. Such new capabilities will help in exponential growth in the mobile health application market.

The mobile health technology market is growing. It is estimated that about 1.5 billion units of smartphones would be sold by 2016. It is likely that by 2015, about 30 per cent of total Smartphones users will have used mHealth applications.

DATA SECURITY
Given the sensitive nature of patient information, data security must be considered. In recent times, infected applications have had to be removed from the android market place and malware has been capable of rooting devices and stealing data. What’s more, financial data has been stolen from thousands of Symbian and Windows mobile users. There is therefore an immediate need to standardise and implement mobile security tools and technology. The responsibility for complying with regulations for applications lies with the publishers and the developers need to test their applications competently.

Another significant notion is that applications available today are not mobile specific – they work fine on android, iOS and html5 irrespective if the device is phone sized or bigger. Hence there is a section of experts who would rather term this to be healthcare applications rather than calling it mobile healthcare applications. 

A PROMISING MARKET
With more personalised, sophisticated, web-based healthcare applications there is a promising market for health app developers and technology vendors.

Furtherstill, mobile network operators have started to tap into these opportunities and perceive mHealth as a natural extension of their core activities. Moreover, with the huge influx of medical data from sensors and other devices, there will be an increased need for advanced data analytics tools and companies focused on data management. The business around mHealth should thrive and become mutually beneficial for all involved.