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'mhealth ' applications: Baby in India with a potential to boom
By Aadil Masood, SiliconIndia
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Saturday, 20 November 2010, 02:41 IST |
1 Comments
Bangalore:Decade ago, it would have been hard to imagine a cell phone being used to save the lives of mothers in childbirth, and improve the care of newborns and children. Healthcare on the move or "m-health" is generating lot positive response thanks to various kinds of mobile applications that are going to change the course of healthcare.
The idea of monitoring patients and promoting healthy behavior through mobile phone applications has emerged as a potential method to reduce the costs of health care while improving quality. The poor clearly benefit from technical improvements that cut the cost of manufacturing medical devices and make drugs more effective.
Cell phones can be attached to diagnostic devices, including those used for remote fetal monitoring or remote wireless ultrasound. This lets a midwife or health worker know in advance that a mother must get to a clinic. In one pilot project in Aceh Besar, Indonesia, a group of midwives was provided with mobile phones, who found them a "basic necessity." They reported an increase in patient load because they could be contacted so easily. They also found they could get advice and information more readily, especially during emergencies, and could refer patients to the hospital when needed.
According t o a report, five hundred million of a total of 1.4 billion smartphone users will be using mobile health applications in 2015. The report from Berlin-based research2guidance found that both healthcare providers and consumers are embracing smartphones as a means for improving healthcare. "Our findings indicate that the long-expected mobile revolution in healthcare is set to happen," Ralf-Gordon Jahns of research2guidance said.
A study by the Lancet, a medical journal, shows that something as simple as sending text messages to remind Kenyan patients to take their HIV drugs properly improved adherence to the therapy by 12 percent. Mobile applications can also be used for recording births and deaths or assuring that both women and children get the care they need when and where they need it.
Health applications have tremendous potential of changing lives of millions. The most promising applications of mhealth for now are public-health messaging, stitching together smart medical grids, extending the reach of scarce health workers and establishing surveillance networks for infectious diseases."With mobile technologies for health, called 'mhealth' or 'mobile health,' we're extending capabilities to where they don't exist today," says David Aylward, who heads mhealth Alliance, a partnership founded by the United Nations Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Vodafone Foundation.
Apollo Hospitals, In India used telemedicine to make secondary and tertiary medical expertise available to rural and peri-urban India through an audiovisual enabled delivery system. As qualified doctors are scarce in these areas, telemedicine has filled an important need. From the year 2000 to 2009, over 57,000 tele-consultations were performed across various disciplines, from sexual health to neurology. Apollo is now offering 24/7 consultations for just Rs 45, the equivalent of $1, and has 71 telemedicine centers across India. Due to the success of the program, the Delhi government is looking to expand the program in the near future in a public private partnership.
Dr. Krishnan Ganapathy, one of the architects of Apollo Hospital's telemedicine program, recently said at the mHealth Summit in Washington DC that mHealth in general has only scratched the surface in India because there is a lack of awareness among patients and doctors about what mHealth is and what benefit it can provide. In business terms, the demand for mHealth is not there yet.
"With the growing sophistication level of mHealth applications, only 14 percent of the total market revenue in the next 5 years will come from application download revenue" explains Egle Mikalajunaite Senior Research Analyst."76 percent of total mHealth application market revenue will come from related services and products such as sensors".
Currently there are 17,000 mhealth applications in major app stores, 74 percent of them adhering to the paid business model. With more and more traditional healthcare providers joining the mobile applications market, the business models will broaden to include healthcare services, sensor, and drug sales revenues.