Shivvy J

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GUEST BLOGS, OPINION

Article re-published with permission from Telehealth & Telecare Aware

By Charles Lowe (@LoweCM), President, Telemedicine & eHealth Section, Royal Society of Medicine

8 June 2014 – I recently spent a morning at a Telefonica-arranged event entitled “Accessibility & Inclusion in the Mobile World” introducing their report entitled “Tapping into the untapped digital billion“. The event featured some extraordinarily good presentations by experts in successfully managing disabilities. Chris Lewis’s presentation began with the assertion that one billion people in the world have a disability that affects their access to digital technology. He went on to explain that “the better annotated applications, content and web sites become, the easier they are for so-called ‘normal’ people to navigate with the range of tools available.” He then went on to describe the many ways in which technology is improving accessibility. A video of an interview with Chris is here.

Highlight of the morning though for me was the presentation by Caroline Casey from Kanchi. Kanchi is a multi-award winning social enterprise that works to change mindsets and behaviours around disability. Caroline made an extremely strong case that “disability is the new green”. In short she suggested, we need to use all the strategies and tactics of the very successful environmental movement to keep making the case for improving access by those 1 billion people. A hugely impressive presentation.

Also truly excellent were presentations by InsaneLogic, an organisation dedicated to building affordable communication tools that help and empower people with a speech, language or communication need (flagship product, MyChoicePad is available to download for iOS and Android), and Lingoing, an organisation that delivers sign language interpretation using remotely using mobile technology, particularly to help in emergency situations, such as in A&E when a doctor needs quickly to understand a medical history in order to determine correct treatment and cannot wait for an interpreter to be summoned.

Clearly this is an area of particular importance to the health and social care sector, as illness and disability can be linked, so Telefonica are to be congratulated on their focus on this area; my only sadness was that there were relatively few people there to hear the powerful presentations.

Regular readers may recall that this editor is a particular fan of the ability to have remote consultations. In the UK, according to the sunday Times progress continues, however in the US, there has been what looks like a breakthrough, with mobile consultations now being offered in 44 states, by Wellpoint.

Other mHealth-related recent items worth mentioning include:

•  at a recent event in the middle East, Michael Morgan-Curran, global director of mobile health and diabetes at mobile operators association GSMA, said mobile health care services must be standardised so data can be shared by multiple health care facilities and professionals;
• one in three US doctors now recommend medical apps according to this survey;
• the recent Medscape interview by Eric Topol of Anne Wojcicki of 23andme fame. Though a statement of the blindingly obvious, this editor particularly liked the comment that “if you have diabetes, lots of people make money, but if you don’t have diabetes, nobody makes money” as a criticism of the current healthcare system;
• a report, this time from Mobihealthnews, confirms that people using mHealth do not necessarily need to understand the internet to benefit: medication adherence improved significantly even for those with no internet expertise;
• 3ders.org reports on how to make your own microscope using a smartphone of only $2;
• Medcitynews reports on a finding by research2guidance that the most successful apps are: “made for iOS, connects to other APIs, sells as a service”. mHealthnews reports on the same finding.

Finally, to “mobile” statistics. There are some interesting downloads available from FirstPartner on wearables and mobile payments. (As long as you can cope with the watermark, they are free to download). There is also all you could possibly want to know about worldwide mobile usage in the 2014 Ericsson Mobility Report which really does do a truly excellent job of data presentation. GSMA latest stats are here. Their latest annual report includes the assertion that by 2017, mobile healthcare can help cut healthcare costs in OECD countries by $400bn. Powerful stuff.