Not going home with my conference bag on my head

Readers will rejoice to know that I did not have to travel home wearing the conference bag on my head. As I predicted on Monday, Jonathan D Linkous’s presentation entitled What can the UK teach the USA about Telecare delivery and what opportunities does this offer to the UK market? Was all ‘health’ and no ‘telecare’ in the sense that the word is used in the UK.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu started the day by means of a five minute video address. In 2009 he had become an ISfTeH (International Society for Telemedicine & eHealth) ambassador for eHealth. The address was pre-recorded as the previous week he had been in Rio de Janeiro launching the Society’s Global eHealth Ambassadors Program. He said that the UK had a leading role in the development of telecare and telehealth. His reputation for charm and diplomacy is clearly deserved.

Readers, knowing my concerns – well, OK, near-obsession – with the lack of an agreed terminology in this field will not be surprised to learn that my ears picked up when Archbishop Tutu made the point that whatever the words we use, they are a only a tool to reach out to change the lives of people. That’s a perspective I will try to remember

Provocative mHealth presentation

David Doherty of 3GDoctor gave what was arguably the most interesting and provocative presentation of the conference, about mHealth (mobile health).

The core of his proposition is that smartphone communications are rapidly emerging as the next mass medium as the main source of information for people in the way that the internet supplanted television, which supplanted cinema, which supplanted radio, which supplanted newspapers.

He contended that just as the non-smart mobile phone hit the manufacturers of watches and cameras in the noughties, the smartphone and tablet computers are already disrupting other markets, such as for desktop PCs, and will disrupt our accustomed ways of delivering many services, including healthcare. [Telecare Aware readers will be familiar with our reports of adoption of iPads by doctors in the US, and we also heard at the conference that the NHS Direct app, which contains the whole algorithm used in their call centres, has been used over a million times in the 6 months since it was launched.]

David said that “The best opportunity we have of containing future healthcare costs can be achieved by teaching [older] patients to SMS.” He gave examples of how the 3GDoctor service works and of various health apps. Conference Chair Roy Lilley commented that many of the functions of the equipment on display in the exhibition could be replicated on phone and tablet apps.

This session should have triggered more debate: there were audience members I spoke to afterwards who, based on their own preferences regarding phone and internet use, remain to be convinced that these developments have significant implications for their telecare service delivery.

Telewhatever

The third speaker was Jonathan Linkous chief executive of the American Telemedicine Association who, as I indicated above, talked about telemedicine and telehealth (undefined) in the US. He focused first on its still patchy adoption. However, in terms of trends which imply that ‘telewhatever’ is becoming embedded into services, he gave the example of ‘teleradiology’ (interpreting X-rays and scans remotely) which is now so commonplace that it is considered ‘normal radiology’ by its practitioners who did not recognise that they were doing ‘tele’ anything!

He rounded off by making public his invitation to the TSA and other such organisations around the world to form an international consortium to share current telehealth service standards and to develop a common set.

There was then a time for further breakout sessions or exhibition visiting. I noticed a subtle but striking change in the exhibition area this year compared with last. If you asked an exhibitor a question they would be as likely as not to whip out an iPad and show you a presentation or a website as part of the process of answering it. It not only brought home David Doherty’s point about the technology changing ‘service delivery’ but it also highlighted that the experience of sharing a small screen with someone keeps the communication flow personal. So perhaps tablet computers will help bridge doctor/patient communication gaps!

The conference was rounded off by the non-industry speaker, Nick Hewer from the UK’s version of The Apprentice TV show. It was mildly entertaining but when it ran over time many audience members left. Not a reflection on Nick, but to catch trains, one assumes.

– – – – – – – –

A selection of comments gathered from attendees
[to be added]

We’ll reserve this space for various articles, blog postings, Tweetstreams and insights about the Connected Health Symposium, held 20-21 October, sponsored by the Center for Connected Health. With regrets once again, Ed. Donna was otherwise engaged and was unable to take that not-too-long train ride north. Your comments/reflections invited.

Connected Health Symposium looks for answers to healthcare’s troubling questions. HealthcareITNews

The official CHS Tweetstream (#chs11)

Dr. Joseph Kvedar’s cHealth Blog on the MIT Media Lab presence at CHS, representing the objective assessment of patient via reactions to emotional stimuli, ‘affective computing’, and the role of ‘relational agents‘ (who can help to deliver healthcare).

From the HIT perspective, Melody Smith Jones attending from the Perficient technology consulting firm on Meeting patients halfway reduces costs. “Everyone is discussing ways to best engage patients and, not surprisingly, what the price tag of such ambitious efforts will amount to.”

Connected Health Symposium offers pitfalls and possibilities for wireless innovation. MobileHealthWatch reports that there was an emphasis on low-cost innovations in wireless health, specifically “pilot projects that look really great at conferences but that no one ever uses,” as well as projects that look great when they’re launched, then die out when the money runs out.”

A highlights report on Day 2 of the recent Mobile Health Expo (MHX) 2011 in NYC. Some points:

• mHealth as the convergence of social media (SM) and healthcare (HC) or wellness care (WC)
• 7,000–or 2%–of Apple AppStore apps are clinically related
• Need safeguards for such mHealth apps as diabetic insulin dose calculators;  doctors very wary due to risk and liability, not to mention significant implications for HIPAA privacy and security
• social support a key motivator

Many thanks to reader Bill Oravecz of EHR and health management consultancy WTO Associates.  Report

Overshadowed in our reporting by the ATA event, the Mobile Health 2011 conference (event website) was happening at Stanford University, California on the 3-5 May. Do your own catching up with the Twitterstream archive, or read a lengthy and thoughtful report compiled by R. Craig Lefebvre, of socialShift. What Really Works in Mobile Health? A Summary of the 2011 Conference. And the conference triggered a terminology rant worth reading by Geoff (Technology Entrepreneur, ex-Health Hero, ex-Bosch) Clapp: How I Stopped Worrying and Love [the name] mHealth.

**Updated 13 May** Winning the conference award for Best Mobile Health Solution for Behavior Change was the Tonic iPhone app, for keeping track of anything in your fitness and health routines. Those of us who remember Zune Life (a casualty of the recession) will know the founder, Rajiv Mehta. Mobihealthnews interview.

Presented by the Business Development Institute (BDI)

New York City, Wednesday 19 Jan 2011

Your reporter is Donna Cusano

The content of this semiannual half-day conference on mobile healthcare was oriented primarily for pharmaceutical marketers and communicators. Thus most of the case studies presented were from the pharmaceutical sector, with an emphasis on patient (primary) and physician information delivered via smartphones. Leavening this was a discussion of texting in an adolescent health program here in NYC. A lively tweetstream, projected on a small screen stage right, kept a running commentary and also outside links to videos and other source material.  It is available at #BDI with a transcript of the day’s activity provided by Bridge 6. (Ed. Donna is @deetelecare) 

Highlights:
Pfizer and health management. No exception to the cautious approach pharmaceutical companies tend to (or must) take with social media and partnerships, the heart of Kate Bird’s (Director of Digital Communications Policy) presentation centered on four apps, two outside the US: the partnership with Epocrates enabling direct contact with medical professionals to report adverse events; Smidge in Canada, a behavioral modification app to encourage healthier habits; Protonix mobile co-pay and refills, using designated text codes; and in Hong Kong, Pfizer Nutrition and Yahoo!‘s educational app that lets parents create flash cards for children, using preloaded forms.  What’s surprising is that all these apps are for iPhone only, with no plans to add Android and (ex US) Symbian—but 70% of their searches are from Apple devices (one tweet: Android users don’t get sick)
Ms. Bird is forecasting that apps are becoming saturated anyway, with which many in the audience, including this editor, concurred.) Another surprise: despite quadrupling in traffic recently, Pfizer’s website has only just been redone for mobile, which will enable the current 1% of their website impressions to grow and to benefit on what they have found is a lower cost per click cost. (Memo to Pfizer: your patients are not only using Android phones, but many will be buying tablets (and not just iPads.)

Joe Grigsby (Director, Emerging Media) from agency VML presented the case history on Text4Baby, the nearly two year old prenatal health reminder SMS for mothers [TA 8 Nov] which is 6 million texts to date; with 100,000+ users T4B is projecting an eventual 1 million.  Among future professionals, 25% of nursing students use iPhones, 70% of medical students have iPhone/iPod. But his points were strategic, reminding the audience that even though mobile is the ‘new norm’ for a younger age group, it doesn’t change marketing fundamentals and the need to develop a marketing strategy.  If anything, mobile has enhanced consumer control (as long as their information is secure). Smart marketers have to think even more about the end user and their individual goals as shaping the value proposition, not what app to make; what they are doing and how to add value. (Slideshow available at Slideshare)

Helping ACCU-CHECK diabetes monitor users better understand their condition and how to manage it is Roche Diabetes Care’s ‘Glucose Buddies’ iPhone app (again, no mention of Android). This free app also gathers general demographic information for Roche which is a secondary business goal, in addition to patient education. This information sparked a Twitter commentary on tradeoffs on privacy for ‘value’ although the data is ‘de-identified’.  The lack of a Spanish-language version that would be targeted to Hispanics who have, as a population, an above-average incidence of diabetes, also prompted a few choice tweets. Presented by Todd Siesky, PR Manager, Roche Diabetes Care.

Monique Levy’s review of Manhattan Research’s recent mobile-related studies touched on some points already made on Telecare Aware. Key highlights:

Physicians and mobile
* Doctors are abandoning the mainstay BlackBerry for the iPhone, with Android down the list (for now)
* MR projects that currently 72% of physicians have smartphones, projecting that 81% of doctors will have a smartphone by end of year, accelerating their year-ago projection by a year. [TA 3 Mar]   25% will have iPads and/or tablets (note the Dell Streak is targeting healthcare enterprise: TA 15 Sept ).
* Health info outpoints health tools. Visiting websites is as common as using apps like Epocrates, Medscape Mobile and Skyscape—doctors are seeking information (note to pharma companies, publications and references—time to get mobile versions of your websites)
* 65% of physicians use smartphones to check e-mails, but 41% are using mobile Websites and 38% apps.
* The greatest uses of smartphones (@50% in descending order): drug reference databases, clinical/medical references, reading medical journals, treatment guidelines, prescription dosage calculator)
* Remote patient monitoring is underdeveloped at 10%–same as writing medical notes

Consumers and mobile
* Again, health info outpoints health ‘tools’ or apps
* And it won’t come from pharma companies: 71% of those age 35+ are “not interested” in mobile services from a pharma company. (What will pharma do to win them over?)

Leaving the lofty heights of pharma-land for the streets of the South Bronx and East Harlem, Dr. Katherine Malbon of the Mount Sinai Adolescent Health Center (MSAHC) shared how her idea to connect young patients with their ‘health home’ at MSAHC via text messaging and social media turned into a six-month successful program, ‘Text in the City’.  Teens opt-in for information, individual answers to their questions (within 24 hours, birth control reminders (most requested) and weekly ‘HealthBytes’ of advice.  Texting and often unlimited plans are ubiquitous (95%) in this population and age group—an amusing example was a teenaged girl texting non-stop as she received a physical exam! But privacy is a concern—users are reminded to delete their perhaps sensitive texts. Dr. Malbon’s passion is clearly serving teens—trained as a paediatrician and working in several Central London hospitals, she moved to the US as adolescent medicine is not a recognized sub-specialty in the UK.

Rounding out the conference was more on marketing and communications from Porter Novelli’s EVP Social Media, John Havens.  One memorable quote:  “If you want to speak doctor – speak mobile.” With the PwC findings of 56% of Americans liking the idea of remote healthcare and 41% via mobile phone—he focused on the less conventional as ‘pointers to the future’, such as earplugs that gauge your eating and wirelessly report activity (U. of WA), the Kaiser WeightMate app acting like a Chinese mother after you brought home a B, Frontline SMS: Medic (now Medic Mobile) in developing countries and goggles that prompt with speech and images. “Why is mobile so important for healthcare? Because it saves lives.”  Just a reminder why we are in the field…and that mobile technology is changing so quickly that unless we are otherwise funded (non-profit) developers and marketers need to focus on business case, goals and usage/ROI.

Many thanks to Maria Feola and Steve Etzler of BDI and Mario Nacinovich of AXON plus the Journal of Communication in Healthcare.

MIT Enterprise Forum of NYC

Wednesday, 17 November 2010

Reporter/Attendee:  Donna Cusano–Editor, North America

Is this a perfect storm for healthcare IT and consumer health? Panel moderator Raymond Falci (Managing Director, Cain Brothers) set out a ‘storm map’—a hospital IT spaghetti chart that represented ‘streamlined process’.

• Business models in consumer health are fractured—whether payors seeking the next gen in disease management; pharmaceutical companies trying to increase falling sales; healthcare providers attempting to measure and manage risk (and will accountable care really work?); and consumers reluctant to pay for anything.
• Prospect areas:  Monitoring chronic diseases, other remote monitoring, acute care post-discharge management, member health status and wellness monitoring.

Panel question #1: What are the obstacles and enablers to connected healthcare adoption?

Nick van Terheyden, M.D. (Chief Medical Officer, Nuance):  Prior experiments in paperless hospitals in 1990s unworkable because inability to transfer records and information.  Current EMRs and tablets take too much time.

Rob Dhoble (President, Diversified Agency Services Healthcare):  WebMD in 1990s opened up torrent of information, not always correct.  Understanding it is a problem for average person.  Video e.g. YouTube the most persuasive (and often incorrect) medium—video is ‘surrogate’ for information needed.  People gravitate to ‘authorities’ who make health information simple (Dr. Oz, Dr. Sanjay Gupta)

Rachel Block (Deputy Commissioner for HIT, NY State Dept. of Health):  State Health Information Exchanges (HIE or HIX) have been useful in delivering health information; most are getting tools (e.g. EHRs) to doctors.  Now emphasis on programs—care coordination, public health, mHealth.  Two factors supporting adoption—systems that are patient-centered, policies in standards and payments.

Teo Dagi, M.D. (HLM Venture Partners): 
The big question:  Do we really know if prevention, monitoring and information (data synthesized) make a difference in outcomes?
Adapting to change:  Physicians find adapting to change like connected health very difficult because of the way they are trained: to take care of patients, provide good technical care, take responsibility for patients, not populations.  Comparison:  NHS short visit system versus longer consult and options in individual care (US).  Other questions:  current comfort level in technology and transferring skills to technology.

Gopal K. Chopra, M.D. (CEO, Dauphin Health):  The system is so broken we have to reconstruct it.  IT is colliding with care—‘we built it so that we could bill.’  For instance:  we have not figured out how to make data actionable in workflow; we have looming shortages of time (e.g. pediatricians where many doctors are not full time through careers), versus demand (birth rate). Can we succeed in taking healthcare out of the enterprise (hospital)?

Panel question #2:  What is the revenue model for advanced technology?

Mr. Dhoble:  Accelerant will be the CMS non-reimbursement for preventable readmissions in 30 days in October 2011.  ‘Expert patient’ key factor (and can patients be ‘experts’?)  Leveraging media to increase learning of healthy behaviors and increase understanding.
Ms. Block:  Disincentive in healthcare reform.  Health may well become a ‘regulated utility’ that is based on scale.  (This was a surprising answer)
Dr. Dagi:  Questioned ‘scale’ paradigm.  We may wind up with a two tier system like the UK or a ‘shadow system’ e.g. privately paid concierge medicine because ‘scale’ does not work.

Panel question #3:  Will EHR adoptions fulfill the ‘vision’ of better quality healthcare in the short term?  (Answers here were especially surprising)

Dr. Chopra:  There is NO WAY that the January 2011 start of adoption and qualifying for meaningful use works.  If he were in private practice, he would run away from it!
Dr. van Terheyden:  Systems can’t extract information from the EHR and put into patient records as needed.
Ms. Block:  System is in overload because of other demands, such as transition to new coding standard (ICD-10).  Meaningful use is a distraction (!)
Mr. Dhoble:  All the stakeholders (pharma, imaging companies, etc.) are lobbying for too much to be included.
Dr. Chopra:  Right now, we are not practicing ‘clean healthcare’ and EHRs aren’t going to change this.
Dr. Dagi:  What is the standard of care?  This is a population question not an individual care question.  (Not clear from his remarks or my notes where EHRs fit in this comparison, though.)

More on Dauphin Health:  After the panel concluded, I spoke with Dr. Gopal Chopra who is their CEO. The early-stage company has designed a system, currently in test, that allows a parent to transmit information on an ill child via phone or web to a ‘virtual resident’ which compiles it and connects to the family pediatrician.  Treatment instructions are returned in 10-15 minutes.  The call is essentially triaged but speeds response back to the parent.  It is in test: their two basic websites are at www.dauphinhealth.com and www.dauphinmd.com.

Not all the questions in the session notes were answered…are they ever?…but an excellent evening (and any event at 30 Rockefeller Plaza is a treat!)

The Economist summarizes the mHealth Summit in a brief but meaty article that summarizes the massive detail presented.  Gates:  beyond the pilots, technology has to be replicable and scale up. Anta (Inter-American Development Bank): ‘We know little about impact and nothing about business models’.  Business interest is stimulated by 1) cloud computing applications, 2) US adoption of EHRs, 3) developing countries’ mHealth ideas and business models (such as mobile banking), 4) substituting technology for medical labor (Healthpoint Services and P&G support).  M-powered:  the convergence of mobile telephony and health care is underway.

Check this space for updates and links. As this will be a short day ending at 3pm, most news will be summarized in the afternoon (ET).

• Rockefeller Foundation announces an additional $1 million in funding for the mHealth Alliance.  This follows the total of $2 million in funding announced in the past two days from Norway’s Norad and HP.
• Bill Gates speech–Yahoo! News coverage.  Opportunities:  telemedicine, patient med reminders, simple EMRs for immunization records, robots (yes, robots).  If you still can’t get enough Gates, Brian Dolan’s take in Mobihealthnews on how Gates fit vaccines with mobile phones (the birth registry) and the limited vision demonstrated in his presentation (but different in his blog?)
• Also in Mobihealthnews:  FDA’s Jeffrey Shuren, Director, Center for Devices and Radiological Health on how FDA will first look at mobile devices that fit in the traditional device mold…but that there should be opportunity to experiment (lots of wiggle room here) and interoperability was a key factor;  from Day 2, Patricia Mecheal of Columbia University’s ‘top ten’ list of lessons from mHealth rollouts, the most important of which is ‘It’s not about technology’. #9 on public/private partnerships may be the key, at least for now, for most.  Photos from the Summit are also on the main page.  (Note the link to Movements.org which was linked to in our Day 1 and 2 coverage–Ms. Brannon has not posted for Day 3 however.  Neat tweet from her on a Mashable article on ‘dumbphone’ i.e. standard voice/text phone is ripe for global innovation)
• The very last session–Does mHealth extend or disrupt existing health systems?–interesting panel, discussion of change in the medical model.  Live feed up till 2:45pm. Linkous of ATA, McCray of WLSA, Arletty Pinel of iCarnegie, others

Running coverage of the mHealth Summit. Check this space for updates and links.

Tuesday

Insight on what’s next from Bill Gates: mHealth, mCommerce and robots. Excellent summary of the Bill Gates afternoon keynote (no live video feed). Tip of the hat to Alex Howard of Gov20.govfresh.

HIStalk for Day 2 (and last for him): the keynotes and supersession plus a small session that included Vitality GlowCaps, PhiloMetron’s PMTS sensor patch and UCLA’s Dr. Ozcan’s LUCAS microscope [TA 21 May]. A must read for a contrarian, witty POV. Hat tip to the (anonymous) author, whom we hope finally got something decent to eat. We will miss him tomorrow.

In other news:

• Norad (Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation) is providing $1 million in support for the mHealth Alliance’s Maternal mHealth Initiative. Release. Announced by the Alliance’s chairman Tom Wheeler during the morning keynote. [Unfortunately, the best part of a somewhat comical morning keynote by Ted Turner expounding on his notions of world peace policy, wandering over the plains like one of his buffalo, with Mr Wheeler politely trying to corral him back to the mHealth point and his support on the UN Foundation’s work on eradication of malaria, polio and measles. After the umpteenth blatant plug of CNN and Cartoon Network, I ‘turnered’ the audio off.–Ed. Donna]
• Healthpoint Services Global, Inc. announced this morning a partnership with The Procter & Gamble Company aimed at advancing a scalable, self-sustaining model for delivery of water, healthcare, and other benefits to underserved rural communities in developing countries. Healthpoint is a for-profit active in India, provides in rural clinics safe drinking water, access to qualified doctors via telemedicine, advanced on-site diagnostics and an on-site licensed pharmacy. In addition they equip and deploy village health workers with mobile phones.  P&G’s FutureWorks will provide financial support, people and in-kind services.  PR Newswire release
• MedApps and CardioNet are forming a strategic alliance ‘to advance their positions in the mobile wireless medical market’.  What they are doing together is not clear from the release except for this from CardioNet’s CEO Joseph Capper:  ‘We are looking to MedApps to help accelerate our entry into additional areas of monitoring, and to extend our platform utilizing MedApps’ CloudCare™ technology.’  Terms not disclosed. BusinessWire. Related news: CardioNet yesterday announced a definitive merger agreement with Biotel, to close by 31 Dec.  This had been postponed since last year.  BusinessWire
• More Text4Baby news: a multi-million dollar commitment from Johnson & Johnson to the National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies (HMHB) Coalition to expand the program both numerically and to add new features; Department of Defense and HRSA (Health Resources and Services Administration) are evaluating the program for the underserved and military families.  PR Newswire.

Neil Versel’s roundup today on FierceMobileHealthcare themed as highlights from the ‘Lollapalooza’ (annual US rock festival) of mHealth. Inspiring but sober. Dr. Louis Hochheiser’s (Humana) hopes on learning patient behaviors via mHealth and as a means of changing behaviors.   Prof. David Gustavson (Univ. WI)  on shortening the long timelines of pharma clinical trials (average 5 years) and other health/science breakthroughs (17 years!).  At Fierce’s executive breakfast, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ Medical Director Dr. Barry Straube on telehealth and HIT being ‘ripe for change’ and very important in the cultural change of bringing healthcare to the individual and away from ‘brick-and-mortar’.  Cell phones being used for maternal and child health and reducing mortality.  (Dr. Straube to retire 31 Jan 2011 after six years at CMS.  MassDevice)

Blog coverage of Day Two: Brannon Cullum in the Alliance for Youth Movements blog, Day Two highlights (including more on Mr Turner’s musings).  Do read down to Theresa Cullen of the Indian Health Service on how in health, our Native American citizens have attributes of both the developed and developing worlds, and Patricia Mechael’s ‘Top Ten Lessons for mHealth’.

Healthcare IT News hosted live blogging of Tuesday only. CoverIt Live replay (direct link to page):  keynotes by Ted Turner, the AM supersession and the Bill Gates luncheon, concluding with Aneesh Chopra’s hyperbolic pep talk.  They also picked up the tweetstream from #mHS10 after midday.

Running coverage of the mHealth Summit.  Check this space for updates and links.

Monday

HIStalk conference summary.  Observant–and not above poking fun. Compared to others’ (HIMSS) focus on population health; heavy on the academics, NGOs, global health people–‘serious people getting serious education mostly working for noble causes underwritten by government money.’  See his points about 75% down on the mHealth business model or lack thereof; the general supposition is that mHealth will never be profitable.  Too extensive to excerpt here–they deserve extensive discussion.

• Diversinet awarded a five-year contract to support expansion of the U.S. Army’s mCare telehealth-outreach program for members of the military recovering from mild traumatic brain injuries (TBI) and other wounds.  This follows the one-year pilot that started with the now-defunct AllOne Mobile that transitioned to Diversinet, the developer of the MobiSecure Health platform.  Release.   Diversinet booth #202-12, in the Qualcomm pavilion.  [Flashback to findings presented at ATA:  TA 21 May]
• West Wireless Health Institute announced its first engineering prototype, Sense4Baby, a non-invasive fetal and maternal monitor that is portable and uploads data to the internet.  It incorporates cardiotocography, standard technology for measuring fetal heart rate and uterine contractions, which is typically administered in a clinical setting for 20-30 minutes per visit and is used in high-risk pregnancies.  Demo at their booth #205.  Release.
• mHealth Alliance to receive a two-year, $1 million donation from HP.  This funding will assist the Health UnBound (HUB) online community and the Maternal mHealthInitiative.  Release.
• Text4Baby has passed 100,000 subscribers–101,962–announced by Dr. Todd Park, CTO of Health & Human Services, which has also created a Text4Health taskforce on how to apply lessons learned from Text4Baby to smoking cessation, obesity and childhood health issues.  Mobihealthnews.  Park also announced ‘detailed plans for the government to launch a website featuring health data harvested from across HHS – a wealth of easily accessible, standardized, structured, downloadable data on health care at the national, state, and county levels, as well as by age, gender, race/ethnicity, and income.’ mHealth Alliance release  

Blog coverage of Day One:  Alliance for Youth Movements blog (Brannon Cullum) 1st day highlights

Mobihealthnews on morning keynote speaker Dr. Francis Collins:  increasing number of grants for mobile health research, highlights of NIH-funded applications and devices, the difference between developed and developing markets.

While Telecare Aware will not attending the mHealth Summit, here is how you can follow it as it happens.  

UPDATED 9 NOV (PM)

mHealth Summit website streaming video (and Twitterstream) here .  Alternate live feed is on mHealth Alliance website here.   Live only for keynotes and ‘supersessions’. 

mHealth Summit’s YouTube channel here.  Posted interviews:  Microsoft (Kristing Tolle), McKesson Foundation (Carrie Varoquiers), Qualcomm (Clint McClellan).

Twitter:  #mHS10 (this feed is also on the streaming page)

Also on the mHealth Alliance website: 

• Press briefing podcast (courtesy of 3G Doctor) focuses mainly on mHealth in the developing world and policy issues such as extending healthcare via mobile to compensate for physician shortages.  A key announcement here is that Muhammad Yunus, Bangladeshi economist, Nobel Laureate and founder of the microcredit pioneer Grameen Bank, has been appointed to the mHealth Alliance board. (3G Doctor will also be there (booth #221) with a demo of their 3G Mobile Video consultations.)
• Interview with the head of Sproxil, Dr. Ashifi Gogo, on their Mobile Product Authentication system being tested in Nigeria to fight drug counterfeiting. [TA 5 Nov]

Telecare Aware is a media partner of the mHealth Summit.