Frost & Sullivan’s Asia-Pacific Telehealth Outlook 2016-2020 is projecting that telehealth (broadly defined as telemedicine, remote patient monitoring (RPM) and mobile health), will be growing from US $1.02 bn in 2015 to $1.79 bn by 2020. Driving growth in the region are an aging population, governments building out 3G/4G mobile networks and developing favorable policies and roadmaps. However, the study found that impediments included a familiar tune of poor clinician adoption, unfavorable regulations, lagging technology and (ta-da) payment models. What’s improved? Wearables in the region have made great strides, and payment models, according to F&S, are concentrated on patient and provider pay. Not so familiar is that many Asia-Pac nations are building a Smart Cities and Smart Nation infrastructure; telehealth is a key area almost always included in a Smart City plan. The study will set you back a smart $4,950. Marketwatch release. F&S feature page.
‘Explosive growth’ for telehealth and telecare at last?
This sunny summertime prediction by Ephraim Schwartz, an editor-at-large for enterprise tech publication InfoWorld, outlines five main reasons why:
- Healthcare is broken, and because it is, finally there’s the financial commitment from providers.
- The base of home telehealth devices is now fairly large at 3 million in the US so that the projection by 2018 of 10.3 million in the US and 19.1 million worldwide doesn’t look improbable (Berg Insight).
- Cellular and digital phone networks are now ubiquitous. The conversion of existing POTS devices which account for 70 percent of existing telehealth users is underway. Mobile is driving developers to create smartphone health apps and devices. (more…)
Anyone doubting the benefits of clinical mobile access, read on…
Yes of course it is a survey produced by a supplier, so possibly a trifle biased, however EU News’s item on the benefits of mobile access by community health people makes a very strong case for good access to clinical information when visiting patients that makes sense.
Notable quotes include:
Lack of access to patient information in real-time is affecting the ability of 88% of community health workers to perform their roles…
70% of participants said mobile working technology had resulted in greater patient involvement in care and the management of conditions, and had also improved the quality of visits, with more time focused on treatment.
Almost a fifth of respondents said they spent more than ten hours a week, the equivalent of more than two hours per day, on a combination of travelling back to base to file reports, and other administrative tasks – time that could be spent providing enhanced patient care or home visits.
Mobile alerting trials for public emergencies (UK)
This service potentially will be used in the UK (as in other countries) to alert people in a particular area via their mobiles of an emergency and may give them appropriate instructions on what to do. The service does not require the government or anyone else to know individual mobile numbers – it works on all mobile devices within an area defined by the emergency.
Three trials were run last autumn, working with three of the UK’s biggest mobile network operators to test different technical approaches for such a system. Two different approaches were tested as part of the trials:
- cell Broadcast service (CBS): the broadcast of a text-type message to all handsets in a defined area
- location-based SMS messaging: all numbers in a specific location receive a traditional SMS message
Of the two, (more…)
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