Would you buy a house without doing any research on the neighborhood, price or number of rooms it had?
That’s what nearly one in five healthcare organizations are doing.They’re pursuing a mobile health initiative without having a specific reason for doing so, new research has reported.
Granted, mHealth is turning out to be a winner for reducing costs and helping patients manage chronic diseases and stay out of the hospital.
But roughly 19 percent of the 106 healthcare providers, insurers and other healthcare-related organizations responding to a survey earlier this year answered "no driver" when asked the question: "What is the top driver for your organization's mHealth initiative?"
The study was conducted by Medullan, a Cambridge, Mass.-based IT consulting firm.
Shockingly, larger companies – 1,000 to 4,999 employees – were the ones most noticeably without a real reason to import mHealth.
That answer came in third among companies with less than 1,000 employees, behind "cost savings" and "improved health outcomes."
Not surprisingly, that worries mHealth proponents, “who feel that mobile health projects undertaken without a clear goal are doomed to failure because they won't be sustainable,” the story revealed.
"We were surprised that so many organizations would undertake mHealth initiatives without a clear driver," said Ahmed Albaiti, Medullan's CEO. "While we believe strongly in the value of mHealth initiatives, no driver and no objectives is a recipe for disaster. The overall impression we got from the survey results is that there is a lot of activity around mHealth but many companies are spinning their wheels and need some focus."
“We’re driving without a dashboard,” Clint McCellan, a Qualcomm exec, was quoted. Speaking at a conference in San Francisco, McCellan went on to say that challenges in connecting devices, medical applications and patient information and making it all work together could be part of why we’re not yet using mHealth to its fullest.
According to the Medullan survey, when asked "What is the key challenge your organization faces in achieving its mHealth goals?", 32 percent indicated they have no clear strategy or execution plan and another 30 percent cited a lack of leadership.
Edited by
Brooke Neuman
