Wednesday 29 September 2010

First mhealthshake website to my knowledge

Mhealthshakes are the combination of wireless devices, wellness/fitness, sharing (social media) and personal feedback from professionals.
Or, as in slide 22: device + self-care + sharing + coaching.
Edwin Padlan is a health enthusiast and a mobile strategist.
He created fit-mob, the first (as far as i know) website dedicated to the combination of these products and services.

On fit-mob, he explores ideas, technologies and business models in the converging wellness and wireless industries.

Sunday 26 September 2010

Can physicians authorize medication by mobile phone?

Looking for mobile systems where physicians can subscribe and authorize medication.

When physicians visit patients at their home (or carehome / care-center / serviceflat), they should be able to (via network or WiFi):

  • Lookup patient (/EHR)
  • Lookup patient medication
  • (eventually add medication)
  • Prescribe & Authorize medication
  • (eventually add preferred pharmacy)
All via their mobile phone, completely paperless

The patient can then visit the pharmacy and receive the medication.

My online search and my extensive Evernote 'library' didn't give me any answers.
Can you give me a hint?
Thanks!

Friday 10 September 2010

mHealth SWOT-analysis: blame it on speeding

Is mHealth a hype or not?

That depends on which mHealth segment you are talking about. The mHealth-definition is ready to be re-written due to it's rapid development (like the health2.0-definition).
There are differences between wireless communication in healthcare, tracking systems, mobile apps, at home monitoring systems, ... all of which are considered "mhealth".
Some segments have tremendous future on a short term, some on a longer term, some will be buried by legal barriers, some will have zero chance due to government incompetence and ignorance.
And then you have consumers that are only aware of the shiny side of technology and are outraged the possibilities aren't rolled out more rapidly. Such an outrage, together with social media, fuels hyping. 

The main threat for mHealth (broad definition) stays it's recent acceleration in development AND the fact that it's now available at reasonable prices. Going at warpspeed the mHealth development takes some corners too fast. Mhealth comes at such speed that panicking competitors can only shoot it before asking questions and governments doing likewise. Together with these consequences, this leads to even more blurring and confusing definition(s).

Better definitions will lead to better understanding and correct estimates of the real potential of the different mHealth segments.

I suggest you read 3 excellent unbiased articles on this:

Lightweight lowtech lowcost company communication

We've always had an electronic bulletin board.
It did consist of a simple form on our intranet. When filled in, the data was stored in a MySQL database and emailed internally to the Gmail inboxes of the management (8 people).
Follow up of the messages was simple: reply to the message and the management is informed.

Challenge
A lot of that shared electric bulletin board information should be shared to more employees than only management, but also unavailable to the general public!
And if targeted to all employees, that board should be extremely easy to consult and read.
Rapid and fast reading + useability are key.
And reactions of the management (follow-up) on information topics should be open to all too.

Here we go!
First tests with yammer, present.ly, .. didn't run very well because users found it too difficult to use (comparison: here).
And there was a lot of confusion on what info should be put on email and what on Yammer. People had to open different apps and the character limit was to low.
Main usergroup are nurses and while they are incredibly gifted people, most of them are not very interested in using electronic systems ... especially if they consider it slightly cumbersome.
My task is to find a system that is not only supereasy, but also perceived as supereasy.

Less = more
Keeping this simple I chose only to use Gmail as a communication platform.
Public communications (post + reaction) is posted by email to a private posterous, which can be consulted by all employees via a touchscreen tablet.
Management only has to open their inbox to post, read and react. All other employees can consult (only consult, not react) the posterous bulletin board.
The posterous website is lightweight, responds very quickly and it's layout can be trimmed down to a very basic, Spartan looking, company bulletin board.
For the management I've also set up Gmail filters which makes it easier to flip rapidly through all messages.
Cost = 0,00 EUR

Tablet choice
We only need a touchscreen tablet with Wi-Fi and a decent browser (and/or RSS-reader).

An iPad was considered overkill as we only needed very limited functionality. 
And because we work with Google Apps, choosing for Android was a more logical step.
After looking at the specs of different contestants, I bought an Archos 7 Android touchscreen for 150,00EUR.

Tought I had everything figured out, but ...
Scrolling is too cumbersome on this Archos 7. 
Even when disabling all extra features, consulting the bulletin board is'n as snappy as i wished for. Sorry, but 2 too 3 seconds is too much 'waiting' time.
And this Archos has it's own Android appstore. Needless to say this store doesn't offer other browsers (which might be faster). 
Other setback is .pdf files, posterous shows them with Flash. And Flash will only be supported from Android 2.2.
I got what I paid for and the system is currently unavailable too be used as an internal bulletinboard for all employees.
Maybe I have to go for the iPad or an Archos101.
To be continued.