Wireless Medical Blog
Successful Business models for mobile healthcare
By Vaishali Kamat - Last updated: Monday, March 15, 2010Telemedicine and telehealth have been around for a long time, but deployments have had limited impact in terms of commercial success. In the last few years the market has re-emerged with a new array of titles – Connected Health, Mobile health, mhealth, and even Health 2.0. So what is really going on? In this blog I’ll try to share some of the reality behind the hype, and examine what is really involved in creating successful connected health products and services.
Mobile phones take a central role in all our communications today, and there is no reason to think that this will be different for healthcare. In December 2009 I spoke at the the mobile healthcare industry summit in London. I chose to take a critical look at the role of Mobile phone manufacturers and cell phone network operators in the future of health services.
I questioned where mobile device manufacturers and network operators can generate revenue from health services, and therefore how they might enter the market. I concluded that traditional telehealth business offers limited direct revenue for the handset manufacturer or the network operator. So why get involved? and how might they drive business?
It looks like there is significant demand from consumers for mobile health applications. It was the third fastest growing segment in iPhone Apps in 2009.
For Mobile Handset makers: Phones that offer the capability to run health applications could differentiate to the consumer (“I want the one with the fitness coach/diabetes management/fertility apps”)
For Network operators: Support these health apps with relevant infrastructure could also differentiate (“I know my health data is secure with this operator”)
Partnerships are also valuable ways to enter the market. Network operators can bring their scale and ability to offer consumer services, while medical device companies bring their understanding of the consumers, and the patient needs.
Who is demonstrating commercial success in mobile health? What model will we see emerge in the next few years?
paulwilliamson Said,
March 19, 2010 @ 1:59 pm
You can read the views of others on my presentation here:
http://mobihealthnews.com/5613/why-bother-with-wireless-health/
by Brian Dolan of mobihealthnews