Mobile Health Converging With Smartphones; Sensible Regulatory Approach Essential
Mobile phones and high-tech apps have become a promising means for involving patients in their own healthcare. And health leaders stand at the forefront of this trend.
- Healthcare providers are looking for ways to increase patient engagement.
- And wireless devices such as smartphones and mobile applications for them have proliferated.
- This convergence of technology and new demands for meeting people’s healthcare needs has led to mHealth. The Washington Post recently ran an article about it.
Mobile health apps have spiked in number, just as mobile phones and wireless devices have become ubiquitous.
- There are more cell phones in America than there are Americans!
- Nine out of ten American adults have a cell phone — almost complete penetration of the market — and almost half has a smartphone (iPhone, Android, etc.).
- Apps for smartphones and wireless tablets have really gained popularity, passing 1 million apps and 60 billion downloads. Besides games, entertainment, shopping and such, phone apps offer health, wellness and medical tools.
- Some 100,000 apps enable users to find health information, log data from a chronic disease or vital sign monitor, or keep better tabs on their diet and exercise.
- Mobile health wireless technology empowers telehealth. Doctors in different places can video conference while viewing MRIs or other diagnostic results, for instance.
- Patients and their providers can use mHealth apps to collect data about following medicine regimens, chronic disease status or other medical needs.
The technology is incredible and fast-changing. The government, however, is not so much.
- The Food and Drug Administration has been slow and less than adept in its approach to mobile health apps.
- Regulations that apply too heavy a hand or that unnecessarily sweep certain apps under the agency’s oversight would risk the rapid progress mHealth has experienced.
- The initial guidelines haven’t given the clarity and certainty that the market needs. And whether and how mHealth apps fit into healthcare reimbursement remain unanswered questions affecting mHealth’s future.
Mobile health has sprung naturally from advancements in communications and computing technology. There’s no going back. It’s likely that mHealth could help save healthcare costs. It could enhance treatment and empower patients and consumers. For that, America can’t afford for the government to anchor mHealth or to use too heavy a regulatory hand that suffocates a mushrooming sector that stands to benefit healthcare.
