Telehealth-RPM-Virtual Visits-Voice Health

HealthIT wants your mobile mind.  The mHealth Summit was acquired this past year by HIMSS to ensure that the four horsemen of “technology, business, research, and policy connect.” The organizations they represent would like to disrupt and transform the future of health care delivery. And the 3000+ attendees and 253 exhibitors (up from 206 last year) appear to want to believe in that connection. HIMSS, the largest Health IT association in the world, with its 50,000 individual members, 570 corporate sponsors and 225 non-profit members, has the muscle mass to power the connection of ideas and innovation to healthcare systems, payers, and providers. So it was no surprise when they acquired the nascent mHealth Summit.  As for you of a mobile and mHealthy market mindset – this year you could be a doctor, university research team, a government agency, a hospital, a device maker, a carrier, an IT exec and, oh yeah, as an afterthought, maybe even a consumer and/or patient.

Wearables – they’re all the rage now.  A $1.5 billion market by 2014, or maybe $6 billion by 2016. That number includes products that are not yet on the market like Google Glass which is due out late 2013 or early 2014. Pogue describes a prototype which has packed “memory, a processor, a camera, speaker and microphone, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi antennas, accelerometer, gyroscope, compass and a battery, all inside the earpiece.” Good luck to us unlucky enough to be in a car while you are enjoying this power.  Today's texting distractions have drivers swiveling all over the highways, walkers slamming into telephone poles and joggers tripping over tree roots.

Deloitte has made an executive decision – ‘senior’ begins at 67.   Taking the first step onto a slippery slope, Deloitte, advisor to CIOs and other C-worthy executives, tries to get ahead of the age wave. To distinguish seniors from boomers (aging away as they are), their most recent report on healthcare consumerism has decided to pick its own cutoff for a generational split – despite Medicare (65), full Social Security eligibility (varies by birthday), and various senior discounters from AARP (55+) to AAA (65+). So we have a tantalizing question to ponder – does that mean that in 2013, senior-ness for Deloitte  begins at 68?  What about in five years – will it be age 72?  We are in a cycle of growing longevity that is surely underestimated by everyone, including consumers, but most significantly, then, will be Deloitte and the C-folk.   But they used a web-based questionnaire and didn’t provide age segment breakdowns of the 67+. As with most surveys, therefore, responders aged 67+ who indicated they would use remote monitoring to send information to their doctor (a hypothetical capability for sure), are NOT a representative sample of the older and still-viable decades (age 77+).