The opportunities around mHealth, both connected devices and consumer applications, are set to change healthcare delivery as we know it today. From prescription-ready online eye exams to GoogleGlass operating rooms to consumer financial decision support tools, over the next 12-24 months mobile will take us places we could never imagine just two years ago.
Personal health technology means more informed, smarter consumers who will push payers and providers toward delivering better outcomes.
Let’s put mobile in context. There are approximately 6 billion mobile phone subscribers across the world. Over 40% of U.S. household has already gotten rid of their landline. The average smartphone user checks their phone 150x every day and most have their phone with them 22 hours per day. By 2015 an estimated 1 billion consumers will use mobile payment generating about $1 trillion in transaction value.
Healthcare companies get it! They recognize that today’s always addressable consumer has a mobile mindset…an expectation that any desired information or service is available on any device at a person’s moment of need. Almost a quarter of Facebook’s 1 billion users are "mobile only", it’s almost 3x for Twitter. Mobile is rapidly growing as the most important channel throughout the customer journey. For Millennials, who send an average 88 texts per day, mobile isn’t an activity it’s a lifestyle…it’s their way of connecting.
From a care delivery perspective mHealth is an exploding category. It includes both connected medical devices (monitors and trackers across a range of specific conditions or metrics (e.g., wellness wearables; weight loos or medication trackers; diabetes, sleep apnea or cardiac monitors) and mobile healthcare applications that perform a number of functions: inform, instruct, record, display, guide, remind, communicate. For example, over the next five years it’s expected that 13 million wearable connected devices will be integrated into wellness plans…a $6 billion industry. And. roughly 1/3 of patients use their mobile device or tablet on a daily basis for health research and/or to book appointments.
mHealth means communication between patient and provider is no longer a one-way monologue, but rather a data-driven, personalized interactive dialogue–that’s portable. Here’s an Infographic looking at the impact trends surrounding the Mobile Mindset.