Take Tunstall’s RTX3371 Wireless Telehealth Monitor, for example. The device just cleared the U.S. FDA and uses a slower GPRS cellular radio to receive and send data.

Vital signs are wirelessly collected from other compatible devices like weight scales and blood pressure units; the stats can then be forwarded on to doctors or hospitals by using the integrated cellular radio. As if that weren’t enough, the RTX3371 offers voice functionality for questionnaires on how a patient is feeling.

I still want to see this done by just one device… my smartphone.

All of this holds exciting possibilities for the world of mobile health. Just as “eHealth” emerged as a buzzword in the early days of the Internet and later became an industry unto itself, “mHealth,” short for “mobile health,” is poised to see exponential growth in the U.S. in the coming years.

mHealth has the potential to transform healthcare among consumers as much, if not significantly more than the Internet has.  The relatively more portable, personal, and single task–focused characteristics of mobile are ideal for tracking and modifying health behavior, which is at the core of most health businesses and public initiatives. Around the globe, especially in regions where Internet or phone access is spotty at best, mHealth programs are already stepping in to fill this connectivity gap for millions of people. Progress in the U.S., however, has been slower – largely because of the pervasive use of the Internet and the types of mobile devices and plans available to consumers.

…

A recent Manhattan Research survey suggests these forays into mHealth are well-timed: over ten million online adults have looked up health information on their cell phones in the last year.

The outlook for mobile marketing and mHealth looks slow and steady, but certain. To remain competitive, marketers and product developers would do well to keep an eye on this developing market to maintain a competitive advantage as mobile becomes a critical piece of consumer channel mix over the next 18 months.

• Patient
• Care
• Accessible
• Accountable
• Awareness
• Connected
• Contextual
• Collaborative
• Consumer
• Community
• Choice
• Digital
• Electronic
• Experience
• Interactive
• Intuitive
• Mobile
• Networked
• Ownership
• Personal
• Participatory
• Preventive
• Private
• Relevant
• Real Time / Timely
• Secure
• Simple
• Shared
• Social
• Transparent
• Trusted
• Valuable

Of course each one of these has to be placed in context and I am sure that a lot is missing and some don’t fit here.  What do you think?  Please add your comments and relevant links below.

———–

Updates from the comment section:

• Empowerment
• Segmented
• Differentiation
• Responsive

I notice a need for my own sake and sanity to try and understand the different terms and what they mean to me as a consumer of health services (i.e. patient).

Starting my research by reading this paper – “Medicine 2.0: Social Networking, Collaboration, Participation, Apomediation, and Openness” by Gunther Eysenbach.  Here is the abstract to start you out:

In a very significant development for eHealth, a broad adoption of Web 2.0 technologies and approaches coincides with the more recent emergence of Personal Health Application Platforms and Personally Controlled Health Records such as Google Health, Microsoft HealthVault, and Dossia. “Medicine 2.0” applications, services, and tools are defined as Web-based services for health care consumers, caregivers, patients, health professionals, and biomedical researchers, that use Web 2.0 technologies and/or semantic web and virtual reality approaches to enable and facilitate specifically 1) social networking, 2) participation, 3) apomediation, 4) openness, and 5) collaboration, within and between these user groups. The Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR) publishes a Medicine 2.0 theme issue and sponsors a conference on “How Social Networking and Web 2.0 changes Health, Health Care, Medicine, and Biomedical Research”, to stimulate and encourage research in these five areas.

We’ll touch base later.

1. Need to become smarter.
2. Need more time.

Because neither of the above seems a possibility in the near future maybe we can just get some contributors…

From the Executive Summary:

If executed well, wireless home care solutions can significantly enhance an organization’s quality of service and profitability, not to mention providing a defensible source of competitive differentiation.  So why aren’t more organizations investing in these solutions?  Why does there continue to be a general reluctance or hesitancy in automating home care service processes?

At issue are the role of home care service providers within the health care sector and the approaches taken to automate service processes.  Yet the evidence of the benefits of homecare service automation, including improved quality, efficiency and safety, continues to mount.  VDC conducted in-depth interviews with a broad cross-section of home care service providers and wireless solution providers, many with several generations of home care service automation experience.  According to our research, home care service organizations can achieve an average net benefit of up to $15,000 per full-time equivalent (FTE) per year by deploying wireless home care solutions.

It is, however, important to note that these represent optimal benefits, which can vary based on factors such as service provider acceptance, level of solution functionality, reimbursement models (capitated vs. fee for service) and the quality of implementation.  Furthermore, the value proposition of wireless in home care is multi-faceted and revolves as much around the improved quality of life of individual service providers as it does around potential productivity enhancement.  In this paper VDC will examine the opportunity for wireless solutions in the home care sector in North America and provide recommendations on best practices to follow to maximize ROI and reduce the risks that home care service providers face when making wireless investments.

And these are their recommendations which I will not go into and instead point you back to the paper:

1. Avoid multiple, non-integrated information systems.
2. Understand the distribution of benefits received from wireless home care investments.
3. Clearly identify issues to be addressed/benefits gained through wireless solution.
4. Prepare for change.

Having said all that, it still quite surprising and shocking how hospitals have not opened their doors more widely to mobile phone use inside their facilities. However we see some progress being made:

Hospitals in England have been told to consider allowing “more liberal use of mobile phones”, following new guidance issued today by the Department of Health.

Under the new guidelines areas of hospitals where mobile phone use is banned could become the exception rather than the norm. Bans will remain in place in areas where critical care equipment is susceptible to electro magnetic interference.

The latest guidance says NHS trusts “should consider giving patients, staff and visitors the widest possible use of mobile phones, where it doesn’t interfere with equipment, the privacy of others or cause a nuisance”.

Although the main reason for these changes in England are not for the same reasons we stated above:

Health Minister Ben Bradshaw said: “Close support and comfort from loved ones when you are poorly in hospital is essential. Mobiles phones are commonplace in everyday life these days and people have told us that they’d like to be able to use their phones more in hospital to keep in touch.”

Bradshaw added: “That’s why we’re keen to encourage sensible use in NHS hospitals where it is safe to do so, in addition to other services offered in hospitals such bedside payphones, TV and internet access.”

It appears to be more about the patient experience than on the improvement of care… but both are really one and the same so it is good all around.

One question still remains… when will see hospitals adopt mobile technologies more widely?  Will the iPhone do it?   With Palm sinking rapidly and physicians no longer able to defend the ailing platform, BlackBerry may have a chance to win hospitals over especially if they go with the enterprise pitch.  However, on an individual basis I am sure that the iPhone stands a better chance of winning the hearts and minds of caregivers.  We shall see.

**An extremely similar version of this entry has also been posted on our other site.

We wanted to provide an update for those that want to see some content now so you are not disappointed and you keep coming back… It will get better and we will have some valuable and insightful content in these pages.  We haven’t sent the official invitation to our planned contributors but that will take place this week.  In the meantime you can head over to any of these other places mentioned below to get a dose of healthcare and technology news and information.

HITSphere – The brainchild of The Healthcareguy Shahid Shah this site is a Healthcare-IT blog aggregator you may find useful to discover and uncover other interesting sites.

eHealth – John Sharp’s eHealth blog comes up a lot throughout the net (at least it did for me) and I subscribe to it through Google Reader.  A good place to get news and brief commentary.  It has served as a gateway to other places for me.  (His posts don’t seem to accept trackbacks so I will probably drop by, leave a comment and introduce Virtuate to him).

Life As a Healthcare CIO – Everybody knows John Halamka… this is his blog and latest post.  I also found out about John’s post on the iPod (not the iPhone) in Healthcare through David Rothman’s blog – another good place to visit.  (BTW – The iPhone and other mobile devices in the enterprise will be one of the many topics discussed at the Mobile Strategy Blog over the next few weeks).

eHealthNews.EU Portal – The First European eHealth News Portal … This site is part of my daily read.

The Health Care Blog – David Kibbe is running a series: “Confessions of a Physician EMR Champion,” subtitled “A Conversation with American Physicians About How to Save Medicine in the Age of Information.”

The New Life of e-Patient Dave – Truly require reading for anyone in healthcare and technology.  One of our goals here at Virtuate would be to have e-Patient Dave do a few contributions.  We shall muster up our strength later.  Dave’s latest post here.

Through Dave above I found Dr. Ted Eytan‘s blog (where I went because this post interested me) and noticed we are using the same theme.  Since he was there first we will be looking for another themes soon (note at bottom of this post)… at least we know Dr. Eytan has good taste . More importantly you should read his definition of Health 2.0 which I am sure will be mentioned in one of our articles soon.

Quickly Now:

• Neil Versel – Healthcare IT Journalist with a blog.  Since he announced one of his gigs going away I wonder if he would consider writing for us?  Especially since he leans towards the productivity topic which is near and dear to where this blog wants to go.
• Health 2.0 Blog – A blog is for the whole Health2.0 Community as a space to write and to comment.
• The Doctor Weighs In – Written by five physicians.  Sample article: The Future of Health 2.0 Tools.
• The Future of Health IT – Could be summarized by saying its ‘like’ an aggregator that gives us a glimpse into the Long Tail of Healthcare IT (latest post).
• Health Populi – From a health economist and management consultant (sample post).
• Trusted MD – Hippocrates writes more on Health 2.0 which I am sure we will follow a lot of his links to get better acquainted with some of the players.  Some of his other posts show that not everything is hugs and kisses in the health 2.0 debate.  Nice. (BTW – there is a lot more on Trusted MD worth reading).
• HISTALK – Just imagine how much reading and work goes into a post like this one full of links and information.  Saves all of us time.

This is it for now.  Hope you find some of these links interesting.  Will work on the ABOUT page next and will send that email out to our coveted contributors.

A note on the design – You may have noticed the switch from the very elegant Carrington Theme to this  design.  We may go back to Carrington but there was dead link to the author pages that was creating some problems for Google so until we can figure it out we will stay with the current theme.  However don’t be surprised if the theme changes a few more times until we freeze it for a while.