Your phone is a powerful diagnostic tool that you carry with you everywhere — but we’ve yet to hit a tipping point.
From mobile eye exams to medical record keeping to smartphone microscopes, companies worldwide are finding new ways to take the technology out of our pocket and into our health systems — not only in the West, but in developing countries as well.
So what does the future look like? Here are 3 key takeaways from our long-form article on the developing mHealth market:
1. Developing countries are leading the way
Many people incorrectly assume that people in poor countries don’t have equal access to technology. While other technology might be limited, mobile devices are actually widespread in these areas, says Marc Mitchell, a lecturer on global health at the Harvard School of Public Health and founder and president of D-tree International.
“They don’t have a computer sitting on their desk at home, so having a phone with access to the Internet is critical,” he said. “It is an enormous and growing market.”
Due to a lack of infrastructure — in terms of physical roads, wired Internet connections and other health processes — people in developing countries now rely on their mobile phones to do everything from reminding patients to take their medications to allowing remote clinics to track their medical supplies. The fact that mobile phone penetration is so high offers rural clinics the ability to monitor, track and diagnose patients even in the more remote areas. Mitchell’s own company, which designs software that delivers clinical protocols on mobile devices, seeks to improve healthcare in low- and middle-income countries by helping health workers and patients make better medical decisions.
2. Epidemics don’t necessarily lead to long-term solutions
While the concern over Ebola spurred funding that has sparked innovations in treating that particular disease, it may not have moved the needle in global health.
Focusing on epidemics “is not, in my view, the best way to develop long-lasting solutions to improving health systems in the developing world,” said Mitchell.
And even when epidemics do lead to innovations that address a current public health crisis, the downside of developing new technologies in the midst of an outbreak is that there’s less time to perfect them.
“When you have a disease outbreak like Ebola … you just have to jump quickly because you’re trying to stem the tide of the outbreak,” said Steve Snyder, partnerships and development manager at Cambridge, Mass.-based Dimagi, Inc. “You can’t be as deliberate about how to develop these types of tools.”
3. The term “mHealth” is fast becoming irrelevant
There’s broad agreement that the field of mHealth has rapidly advanced even in the last few years, especially as smartphones have become more affordable and widely available. mHealth is now seen as an indispensable part of healthcare in the developing world, both in responding to epidemics and improving general public health.
“Ten years ago, I had many, many people say to me that I was crazy and what I imagined couldn’t be done,” said D-tree’s Mitchell. “Now, people have acknowledged that we can do it to scale and we do have an impact even, and now all these m-skeptics have become enthusiasts.”
Another key future development for mHealth will be ensuring that mobile technologies integrate into other uses of technology in healthcare — a process that’s already underway. As this integration occurs, mHealth could become virtually inseparable from other aspects of healthcare, making even the use of the term seem passé, says Patricia Mechael, a principal at HealthEnabled and senior mHealth adviser at the U.N. Foundation.
“I think we’ll see less and less use of term mHealth in the next year,” she said, “and in two years or three years I doubt anybody will be using the term mHealth.”
Interested in learning more? Read the full article on the 1776 website.
