Mobile Health’s History

The requirements of Meaningful Use Stage 2 emphasize new levels of patient engagement and more and more studies are proving that patients more involved in their care can improve outcomes and reduce costs.  Mobile health is a big part of driving that patient engagement.

If you speak with Joseph Kvedar, MD, director of Partners HealthCare’s Center for Connected Health in Boston, he’ll tell you studies show that people check their phones an average of 150 times a day. Healthcare providers need to take advantage of this “addiction” to engage people in their health.

Since Kvedar first launched his efforts in connected health through technology 18 years ago, much has changed, as you’ll see in our cover story. He started with telemedicine and dermatological imaging and the camera had less than 1 megapixel resolution, was the size of a shoebox and cost $12,000. Videoconferencing capabilities cost $50,000. Today, “the technological changes have been dramatic” with more mobile phones in use than landlines and tools like Skype and Facetime making videoconferencing possible anywhere, anytime. 

The center also coined the “connected health” moniker in 2005. They were trying to get away from telehealth and telemedicine which were at an all-time low in enthusiasm at the time. The mobile craze hit soon after and now, “there aren’t many instances where you would develop a program that didn’t involve mobile technology as part of a solution.” See more on achieving patient engagement through mHealth on page 8.

The ICD-10 implementation date is less than one year away and the Health Information & Management Systems Society worked with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services last summer on the National ICD-10 Pilot Project. Learn about the experiences of some participants and tips for preparation on page 22.

Also this month, staff writer Laura Pedulli talked to several organizations about their go-live experiences—what worked, what didn’t. If you are planning to implement an EHR or another health IT tool, check out the article on page 30.

This issue also includes articles on remote patient monitoring, innovations in diabetes care management and highlights from the first AMDIS Fall Symposium.

This is the final issue of 2013, which was dubbed the year of the patient, the year of Meaningful Use implementation and the year of EHR dissatisfaction. We’ll see you back here in January where we’ll cover all of these topics and more as we navigate the newest themes in health IT.