The healthcare and wireless industries have seen a convergence as of late: the combination of health care and mobile apps. The reason why these mobile health apps have taken off so quickly and have such potential for the future is easy to understand: a perfect storm of factors. For starters, more and more Americans are carrying smartphones and tablets, which have carved out a bigger and bigger chunk of our lives, helping us keep track of contacts, calendars and appointments, driving directions and maps, finance and banking information and entertainment. Secondly, the U.S. population is aging: the eldest Baby Boomers are becoming senior citizens who naturally require more healthcare. Finally, the cost of healthcare is escalating, and many patients, physicians and healthcare institutions are looking for easier ways to handle routine monitoring.
A new report, called “Analysis of the U.S. Broadband mHealth Applications Market,” predicts that the mobile health app market will grow directly alongside the growth in tablet computer use. The study predicts that there will be 82 million tablet users by 2015, up from 10 million in 2010. Much of this growth is expected to be among older Americans, rather than the youthful techno-savvy group that carried the banner in the tablet market's infancy.
But another important factor is cost reduction. As healthcare organizations seek to drive down costs, these mobile health apps can help with, for instance, reminders to stay compliant with medication regiments, or for the purpose of monitoring health. When patients do these two things – medication compliance and routine monitoring of vital signs – it can drastically cut down on expensive hospital re-admissions, reports Information Week.
The study notes that the mobile health app market won't be without challenges; there is a chance that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) may want to take a hand in regulating the marketplace to prevent useless and fraudulent apps from getting in the way of serious, properly developed apps. Other concerns are in privacy; as more of our patient information is put into wireless format, the chance that the information will be breached and misused escalates. Finally, the industry will have to overcome the perception that these apps are a cheap “short cut” to keep health providers and health insurance companies from having to pony up for proper, one-on-one care.
Still, the potential is great, and a number of players have entered the mobile health monitoring app market already. Analyst group Gartner has identified mobile health monitoring as one of the top 10 consumer mobile applications for 2012. This will be an industry that will be interesting to watch as it unfolds.
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Dave Rodgriguez is Editor-in-Chief of HealthTechZone. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.Edited by
Rich Steeves
