Macadamian Blog
Upcoming trends in mHealth
Recently, the CEO of the American Telemedicine Association listed off seven market trends that will have direct impact to the future of telemedicine. One of the trends listed by Jonathan Linkous was mobile health (mHealth).
As most of you already know, mobile use has exploded. This trend has trickled into healthcare and is important because it impacts and changes the way healthcare is delivered. For a brief intro of some of these impacts see one of my previous blogs, ‘Tablet apps in the healthcare industry’.
There are many uncertainties about mHealth such as the cost for the technologies, privacy, confidentiality, reimbursement for use, standardization, usefulness, and efficiency; just to name a few.
So with all these barriers how can we continue to move forward? For inspiration, take a look at some of our other blogs for ideas. Check out a blog by Matt Hately, ‘Creating a usable mobile app’, and this article by Didier Thizy, ‘Successful Mobile Apps’. To get a business perspective take a look at a post from Fred, Macadamian’s CEO, ‘Has mobile created a gap in your product offering?’.
Keep your eyes and ears open this year for lots of movement and changes in mHealth. Besides being a trend in telemedicine, mHealth itself will also see a number of trends in 2012. Following the third annual mHealth Summit in Washington, DC, Brian Edwards, mHealth feature editor at iMedicalApps, highlighted five mobile trends to look for this year:
- Apps that track patient activity
- Binary network apps
- Health-focused games
- Apps that diagnose and treat patients
- Apps that empower patients
To read more into each one of these trends check out: 5 mobile trends for 2012.
About the Author
Anneliis Tosine is a User Experience Researcher in the UX Team at Macadamian. Anneliis’ background is in Biomedical Engineering with a focus on clinical applications and user-centered design.