The Coming Mobile Tsunami — Lessons from the mHealth Conference by Raj Chand, MD
Saturday, March 6, 2010 
Raj Chand, MDI vividly remember watching the AT&T “You Will” ad series in 1993. In a series of rapid-fire sequences, it described what technology would be like someday. At the time, the commercial seemed like science fiction. That is how I felt walking out of the mHealth conference in Washington DC. Over 2 days in early February, 300 people—coders, policy wonks, executives, and providers—discussed the coming wave of mobile health technologies.
Peter Waegemann, Vice President of mHealth Initiative, opened the conference launching into a bold vision of the future where mHealth dramatically changes medical education, consumer lifestyles, provider behavior, and the way doctors and patients communicate. With four billion mobile phone users worldwide, these changes will occur across borders and in vastly different health systems.
New technologies raise novel questions with tough answers. Some of the toughest questions center on regulatory mechanisms and reimbursement. Who will pay providers for new ways of taking care of and communicating with patients? Will the FDA and FCC initiate new regulations over innovations? Yes, the FCC is now involved in healthcare.
As demand for mobile health services increases, I predict the first payers will likely be consumers and physicians themselves. One panelist pointed out that in the past decade, no one told doctors to go out and buy Palm PDAs—and yet they did in masses. Those mobile devices were valuable because they solved problems better than their paper equivalents. Now with most doctors using smart phones with faster processors and greater connectivity, a new chapter has begun.
I predict the biggest innovations will come from mobile technologies for consumers. Some of the more interesting technologies I saw include new applications to help patients manage diabetes, asthma, hypertension, and CHF. Applications that can track, remind, and monitor patients will feed data into personal health records (PHRs).
Companies are also tackling one of the great problems in hospitals—communication. Integrated communications devices will allow clinicians and administrators to monitor flow, resource availability, recognize bottlenecks early, provide real time alerts, and communicate via voice and text, all on a single device.
We have been hearing about these types of advances for some time, but with the ubiquity of smart phones, and the spread of the mobile web and WiFi, we are now closer than ever. Remembering back to those AT&T commercials, what seems impossible today will likely be normal tomorrow.
Interested in mobile health? Check out the 2nd International Mobile Health Conference, September 8-10, 2010, San Diego.
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