The mHealth Alliance’s just-released study, The State of Standards and Interoperability for mHealth among Low- and Middle-Income Countries, focuses on the current state of standards and interoperability (mobile and EMR), identifies gaps and opportunities related to standards in low- and middle-income countries, and offers key recommendations for the mobile health community. The focus here is on developing countries and enabling for them continuity of care across provider, place, and time.  Release.

research2guidance has issued their latest Mobile Health Market Report 2013-2017, with Volume 3, The Commercialization of mHealth Apps. In their view, mHealth has exited consumer trials and entered the wider commercialization phase. The integrated phase is next for the market, but missing regulation, the insurer/payer side and integration into treatment plans will not happen. Key points from their summary: (more…)

Thanks to “an unrestricted educational grant from NHS 3millionlives and Robert Bosch” the consultancy 2020health has produced a wide-ranging and freely available 90-page report comparing the US’s Veterans Health Administration (VHA) and the UK’s NHS’s experience in introducing and using various forms of technology. I nearly missed flagging up this item for Telehealth and Telecare Aware readers because the 2020health press release about it only mentioned the desire to help NHS to become ‘paperless’! However, when a trusted reader drew my attention to it I took a second look and found that more than half the report concerns home telehealth, telemedicine and mobile health. From a UK perspective, the round-up of what the VHA has done on telehealth was useful and contains strong pointers to what the NHS needs to do to start adopting telehealth into its care pathways. Unfortunately, after reading the NHS section I came away with the impression that despite the small scale successes, really large scale adoption will remain something to which we will only ever aspire as long as the NHS remains so fragmented (and the Government’s Ministerial ‘leadership’ maintains its toxic reputation with the people who need to commission and implement telehealth – to be clear, that’s my interpretation, not the report’s). Read it yourself and tell us in the comments if you draw different conclusions. Making Connections: A transatlantic exchange to support the adoption of digital health between the US VHA and England’s NHS.

On a day when ‘their lordships’ wake up to the lack of preparation for ageing that is rampant in the UK (BBC report) it is good to see Bosch doing something to raise awareness amongst children. This year’s Bosch Technology Horizons Award is a challenge to secondary school children to develop a video to explain how technology will help an ageing population. Peter Fouquet, President of Bosch in the UK said: “Bosch is committed to developing technologies that improve the quality of people’s lives and an ageing population is not only a big issue for the UK, but many countries around the world.” Entrants are invited to respond to the question: ‘In the future, how will technology help an ageing population?’ and they can upload their videos to YouTube and then onto the Bosch Technology Horizons Award app on the Bosch UK Facebook page. There will be a prize for the most popular video by votes received on Facebook and the top 20 most popular entries will be submitted to Bosch’s judging panel, which will award prizes for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place. The closing date for entries is 26th June 2013 and the winners will be announced on the Bosch UK Facebook page on 15th July 2013.

Another launch at the NHS Innovation Expo and simultaneously in Durham: County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust (CDDFT), in partnership with InHealthcare Ltd, are launching the new CDDFT Health Call digital healthcare service.

CDDFT have designed and developed their own digital healthcare pathways using the InHealthcare N3-based platform that is interoperable with existing patient systems. As InHealthcare is a healthcare service company rather than a hub or medical device manufacturer, pathways can potentially use any telehealth hub or medical device and data from remote monitoring devices can be shared with clinicians through existing clinical systems. In the press release, Jane Haywood from CDDFT says: “We, like many other NHS organisations, carried out pilots on telehealth, using multiple hubs to evaluate benefits. We quickly realised that we needed to be more flexible but more importantly we needed standardisation across the whole health economy…simply put, we can pick and choose the right devices to deliver the right outcomes.”

The much-touted Cisco Customer Experience Report demonstrates, like spring in March, a definite warming trend towards consumer comfort with telehealth and online/mobile aspects of managing health using these tools by both consumers and clinical staff. In the global survey conducted in early 2013 among 1,547 consumers and 403 health care decision makers in ten countries, 70 percent of customers surveyed were comfortable communicating with their doctors via text, email or video rather than seeing them in person. Comfort, though, is not actuality. Consumer preferences of text, video consults, IMs, email and even that old standby the telephone, versus in-person visits, are still low, in the 19-23 percent range. Online usage questions hover in the 20-40 percent range–a low (to your Editor) 30 percent are using the internet to check for information. What is also interesting is a seeming contradiction: 63 percent of customers are comfortable storing medical records in the cloud, but 39 percent don’t trust internet sites for privacy and security of that same data. Perhaps it’s confusion about what the cloud is? (Cisco Infographic)

Editor’s Note: An interesting and misinterpreted stat is 76 percent ‘find access to care more important than physical human contact with their care providers’ (Cisco slide). At least one blog (HIT Consultant) in an otherwise useful article has trumpeted this as ‘76% of Patients Would Choose Telehealth Over Human Contact’. A look at the question indicates that in market research terms, this is worded as a ‘forced choice’ question–they’d rather have telehealth than no health (care). But overall, the survey indicates that however slowly, consumers and providers are building a level of comfort and acceptability on technology usage and data transfer as part of healthcare. Cisco report/release.

Disappointingly–or ironically–at the end, in true VF style, he pirouettes to a volte-face, grasping for concluding points out of the kultursmog of politics, trends-on and philosophy, the weirdest being how Quantified Selfing may ultimately achieve Teilhard de Chardin’s Omega Point of supreme collective consciousness a/k/a Man Fusing With God. Now this the Eye does object to, believing far more in the Jungian collective unconscious, particularly after a gimlet (fresh lime, please) or two indulged in a pleasantly sociable watering hole, and that God’s last probable direct relationship with a Jawbone was empowering Samson to take one from a donkey and slay a few thousand Philistines with it. Wolcott’s real reason may be much more literal after his investment in all these ‘doodads’: “I better start getting my numbers up. Otherwise, I run the risk of my Fitbit telling me you suck, and the last thing I need is a personal heckler.”