Promising Years ahead for Healthcare IT and mHealth Adoption

We are pleased to feature a post from Andy De, author of Health Science Strategy, on our blog. Andy De, an industry thought leader recognized by HL7Standards as a top 100 #HITsm contributor, is passionate about the impact technology has on improving our healthcare system. This post focuses on mHealth and how the adoption of mobile devices will drive empowered patients. Thank you, Andy, for pointing out the benefits unified patient information management could have in mHealth adoption, by highlighting the challenges patients face when trying to access labs, PHRs, medical records and other clinical data.  In order for patients to play a more active role in their care, personal health information must be supported by a system that is accessible to all stakeholders—including themselves.

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2011, in my humble opinion, promises to be one of the most exciting years in terms of patient and physician empowerment thanks to the convergence of healthcare technologies including electronic health records (EHRs), healthcare information exchanges (HIEs), personal health records (PHRs), patient management and clinical information systems as well as the advent of exciting mobile medical devices, services and applications. The projections for the mobile market globally are impressive indeed. Gartner Group estimates that the mobile marketplace (worldwide voice, data, and services) will exceed $1 trillion by 2014, and that smartphones will outsell PCs by the end of 2011. It is also estimated that almost 50% of the 2 Billion+ people connecting regularly to the Internet will access the web thru mobile devices over the next 2-3 years.

The stellar debut of the iPad as well as advancements in smart phones is driving innovation and emergence of mHealth (or mobile healthcare) (within the context of a hospital) as well as mobile health management (in the context of the patient/consumer) at a pace that is simply unprecedented! A good lagging indicator is the emergence of venture capital funds like the ‘iFund initiative’ from Kleiner Perkins to monetize innovation centered around the Apple iPad, as only one example.

Further acceleration is anticipated to happen given the emergence of competing tablet form factored devices including the Playpad from the makers of Blackberry, the Galaxy Pad from Samsung and many others from similar manufacturers like HP, Toshiba etc. It is this author’s prognosis that the healthcare industry will be one of the earliest adopters of mobile devices, especially touch screen enabled tablets like the iPad across most users including patients, physicians, nurses, clinicians, hospital administrators and executives as well their counterparts from the insurance and life sciences industries. It comes as no surprise at all that life sciences companies across pharma and medical devices are among the earliest adopters of mobile devices like the iPad in an enterprise context.

As elucidated in my previous blogpost, ‘Will Social Media find “meaningful usage” in a healthcare context?’, a significant and relevant trend that has emerged is the ‘Life Blogging’ or Quantified Patient Movement’ that is enabling millions of patients to monitor, measure, share and control their health data on the web, leveraging PHRs, social media tools like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube as well as mHealth apps and devices. This trend is anticipated to further scale and accelerate with the ubiquity of smart tablet devices like the iPad and smartphones and the day is probably not very far off, when patient and physician will be sitting across the table from each other discussing the patient’s condition while looking at a factual, accurate copy of the patient’s medical history and health data on the patient’s iPad, as basis for further treatment and follow up actions!

So what does this mean from a Patient Empowerment or an ePatient perspective?

To clarify the definition, who precisely is an ePatient? The Society and the Journal of Participatory Medicine define ePatients as “individuals who are equipped, enabled, empowered and engaged actively with their physicians in their healthcare decisions“, with the express objective of improving their relationships with their doctors and the quality of healthcare services they receive to improve outcomes.

In my previous blogpost, “Can Life Sciences and Healthcare enable my transition from “Passive Patient” to “Enlightened Prosumer?” I had outlined my vision for easy access to my medical records on demand, while ensuring that the data contained therein is factual, accurate and current. This is key for enablement and empowerment in the context of patients who are interested in taking charge of their health, especially in a post-acute or chronic condition management scenario. The business imperative for this is self-evident. At this time, there is a huge gap between “demand” i.e. patients that need care from both primary physicians and specialists and the ”supply” number of physicians, clinicians, and nurses available to deliver high quality healthcare services at an affordable cost. This demands that patients also assume responsibility for managing their health, disease or chronic condition as best as is possible, across episodes of care and between visits to their doctors. As elucidated in my previous blogposts, ‘Who will make it Win-Win for Patients to adopt Personal Health Records (PHRs)?’ and ‘My Personal Health Record (PHR) in Microsoft’s Health Vault – Confessions of an Early Adopter’, this is easier said than done!

Securing paper or electronic copies of one’s medical records, prescriptions, lab results etc., scanning them or converting them into an electronic format and uploading them onto a PHR platform like Microsoft Health Vault, Google Health or Dossia is daunting indeed, especially for patients who are not very technology savvy. Happily, this is beginning to change given the drive and incentives for interoperability across hospital IT systems and PHRs, thanks to the ARRA and Hi-Tech Act championed by the current US government. The advent and early success of the ‘Blue Button’ initiative that enables Medicare and VA patients to download electronic copies of their personal health records and upload them onto PHR platforms like Microsoft Health Vault, is a significant step forward to addressing this challenge.

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Healthcare providers: What role does mHealth play in your organization’s approach to information management?