Different year, same dream, more hope.  Connected Health Symposium in Boston sponsored by Partners Health Care had more than 1000 attendees and an optimistic tone following this past year's congressional investments in health care reform pilot programs that may include the use of telehealth-type technologies. If you were a new attendee with a pesky chronic condition, perhaps you would have been alarmed at the continuing (from previous years) discussions about what to do about you: 'nudge' via incentives or penalties toward healthier behaviors, overcome your underwhelming (10%) nationwide sign-up for personal health records, devise new ways to 'amp up' your compliance with doctor-prescribed regimens, argue whether your favorite social networks will get you to do what the doctor can't -- and above all, get your active participation in harnessing the ballooning cost of care.  Lots of talk about payment reform from today's transactional and confounding fee for service to (deep breath): 'outcome-driven, quality-based, global payments through accountable care organizations.' I think that means charge less, pay less, get less of what today costs too much for too little in the way of results:

So if you think about an aging 'tsunami' -- doesn't it just make you think of mHealth and iPhones? Rant on.  I was on a call yesterday about an upcoming 'caregiving' and technology event -- as the call proceeded, the topic turned toward low-cost mHealth applications, ubiquitious at a Price Waterhouse tolerance level of $5 per month. [Side note -- PWC doesn't like 'mHealth', so they have renamed it 'Healthcare Unwired']. This week's Health 2.0, next month's Connected Health, not to mention eHealth, telehealth, wireless health, healthcare unbound or unwired -- now that's a tsunami. Note the $2.2 billion of new investment into biotech, medical devices and health IT -- just in the 2nd quarter of this year.