Saturday, 24 July 2010

Questions for the mhealth market for seniors

Too bad I couldn't attend the senior mhealth market 2010 conference.
If I had gone, I would have searched for answers on following questions.
Questions:
  • Mobile OS for elderly (for smartphone + touchscreen). I personally think such OS doesn't have a great future, but i get a lot of questions for the need of such OS. Do such OS'es exist?
  • Apps for elderly that are 'triple blonde proof' (although i prefer the term "Fisher-Price"-apps). Which companies are good at this?
  • Mobile phones conceived as hub/router for medical devices (specialising in connecting to devices and forwarding data). Special interested if they also offer connecting to userfriendly and disguised monitors like iMonsys http://www.telecareaware.com/index.php/innovative-imonsys.html
  • For service-flats (flats specifically for elderly with basic (paid) services) i'm looking for white-label apps. Besides the registration and interaction (menu-choice, leisure program/subscription , calender planning, ...) such apps should offer medication checks, PERS and video interaction. Here in Antwerp there's a 200-flat experiment in collaboration with Falcom (which runs Linux), but it's too basic imho. Any companies wanting to produce such apps?
  • Companies that are targeting young elderly people and focus on easy to use location based services, photo-sharing and tourism (food + guidance). If they concentrate on that core service AND also offer basic medical apps/services, they will do well and sell easier. Which companies are doing so?
BUT: I'm not interested at all in mobile phones or services that:
  • only offer service 'coverage' within a certain range of a specific transmitter/receiver. A lot of fall detection devices are doing this. But older people are very mobile, so their product is useless.
  • don't have a camera or GPS or Wi-Fi
  • have small buttons, tiny text, ...
  • are sold by companies that target OLD people (old people don't think of themselves as old .. and won't buy)
You might want to have a look at this great preso by David Doherty from 3gdoctor, given at the conference:

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