500 Million People to Use Mobile Health Apps by 2015

mHealth Apps Are Hot!

At the recent mHealth Summit (Mobile Health Summit) held last month in Washington, a research report was delivered, indicating that the mobile health application market is about to explode.  It predicts that by the year 2015, 500 million people will be using mobile health applications through their smartphones.

There are currently 17,000 mobile health applications available in the major app stores.  There's an app that will broadcast your heart rate over Twitter.  There are apps that will allow doctors to monitor patients remotely and then advise specialists and nurses regarding treatment.  There are stress test apps, vision and hearing test apps.  WebMD Mobile is now a very popular symptom checker app.  The list is endless as the race is on to get a piece of the anticipated explosion of mHealth market.

Interestingly enough, of the estimated 17,000 mobile applications now available, only 43% are designed for health professionals.  Indeed, many of these are free feature add-ons for enterprise systems.

The real sleeper in the area of mHealth apps are those developed for the patient (aka "the consumer").  

Creation Healthcare reports that "some of the most popular mHealth applications are those that enhance users’ lifestyle, especially when living with disease".  As an example, in a search for the term "diabetes", iPhone's App Store returns 186 possible apps.  The consumer has a voracious appetite for tools that will help in managing disease and chronic conditions, managing diet and nutrition, fitness monitoring, calculating health risk, and so much more.

RSRS understands the appetite the consumer has for information and tools concerning their healthcare.  We are seeing a dramatic increase in patients authorizing the release of copies of their medical records - to themselves.  Moreover, they're telling us that more and more, they are requesting copies of their current lab results, ECGs, x-ray and MRI reports for their own records.  They realize that these are the critical starting points in healthcare management and they want access - for themselves.  As a result, we're transferring these records digitally with encryption, often on mini CDs or secure download, allowing patients to carry their information with them.  We're seeing that patients don't even need to understand everything in the record.  They realize that "access" is more than half the battle - especially at a time when most of the 1st generation EMR's are not integrating patient access in any significant way.

The mHealth app market is here to stay.  The vendors who approach the market strategically, and consider not only healthcare delivery, but consumer experience and access as well, are likely to be more successful.  Creation Healthcare is also seeing an increase in consumer-based mHealth development projects and points out that "tools such as location-based services, touch-screen interfaces, voice controls, and HD video all have the potential to help you achieve your goals in new ways".  However, they also warn that an informed strategy development with a focus on the goals, rather than on the mode of delivery, is critical.