How Mobile Is Transforming Healthcare

The following is a guest post by Nand Kishore Sahu from [x]cube LABS.

Let’s look at a few numbers first-

• According to a study by ABI research, the market for healthcare apps is estimated to be worth around $400 million by 2016.
• In a Harris Interactive/HealthDay survey, over 1/3rd of respondents say they are “very” or “extremely” interested in using smartphones or tablets to make appointments, ask their doctors questions or get medical test results.
• A study jointly commissioned by Telenor and Boston Consulting Group reveals that mobile healthcare can reduce costs in elderly care by 25% while it can bring down maternal and prenatal mortality by as much as 30%. The survey further says that twice as many rural patients can be reached per doctor via healthcare mobility solutions.

The above statistics highlights how in today’s healthcare settings, mobile is rapidly gaining traction and is becoming the central touch point for everyone involved- physicians, nurses and patients; streamlining delivery, impacting outcomes and resulting in better care.

Proliferation of medical devices-

It’s not only smartphones and Tablets that are disrupting the healthcare industry. Wireless devices like sensors, scanners, two-way radios and RFIDs too are getting integrated with the ecosystem and changing the face of clinical process and care. From helping staff in accurately collecting specimen from patient’s bedside to help them remotely control machines connected in the patients room through M2M (machine-to-machine) interface, there are vast categories of mobile medical devices in use today.

There’s an app for that-

From self-help apps to monitor your weight, count your daily calories intake and keep a tab on your blood sugar levels to serious medical solutions in patient care, clinical collaboration and bio-medical engineering- the mini sized computers called apps are penetrating every layer of healthcare delivery process and  positively impacting them.

Technology is enabling…

Technological advancements are also propelling healthcare mobility adoption. Fast, superior carrier networks, real-time video conferencing, imaging, voice recognition, augmented reality and genomic sequencers etc., are helping care providers in becoming more nimble-footed and accurate at every stage of the delivery process and provide better patient care.

There’s no doubt that mobile is changing the face of healthcare. And as the benefits, both qualitative and quantitative, of going mobile become more visible to care providers and patients, it will further fuel the adoption and usage of mobile healthcare solutions. There’s a lot of promise in mobile technology to positively impact healthcare delivery model and make it streamlined, accessible and cost-effective.

This article is written by Nand Kishore Sahu from [x]cube LABS. [x]cube LABS, has been a leader in the enterprise mobility space and has delivered several groundbreaking solutions in the mobile healthcare space.