What may prove as the springboard for mHealth, major wireless providers have began to announce their aggressive, behind-the-scenes efforts to create mHelath solutions, all with one common goal in mind: provide access to quality healthcare for their customers…from anywhere.
Qualcomm
Qualcomm announced its plan to enter the mobile health environment—and they aren’t doing it alone! At mHealth Summit, Qualcomm announced their plans for a new gateway platform designed to improve home-based connectivity to mobile devices by starting a new company, backed by a venture fund and with some 40 mHealth vendors and service providers as partners.
As part of the launch, Qualcomm unveiled the 2Net hub, a mobile device designed to plug into a wall socket at home and provide connectivity for a wide range of medical devices.
Verizon
Verizon is focused on developing solutions to address the enormous economic and human cost of chronic disease as well as the prevalent challenge to accessing healthcare for prevention, treatment and follow-up maintenance.
Sadly, 7 in 10 American deaths per year result from chronic disease. The economic cost of chronic disease management is staggering, too:
$1.1T in 2010 (7% of GDP)
$2.2T in 2020 (12% of GDP)
The Verizon platform is comprised of a suite of digital healthcare solutions, including: chronic care management, clinician productivity, and virtual care. The platform is powered by Verizon’s 4G LTE technology and can deliver personalized programs that assist with food choices, reminders to exercise, alerts in the event that biometric readings go beyond the desired range and to provide a dashboard to track progress.
Veizon is expected to launch its platform in mid-2012.
AT&T
AT&T is focusing their efforts to reduce complications resulting from diabetes by extending care beyond a physician’s physical office and into the patient’s hands. The initiative will offer a limited group of high-risk diabetes patients access DiabetesManager, the enterprise mHealth solution from AT&T and WellDoc. The FDA platform is a self-management tool that enables patients to manage their diabetes by offering real-time tips and advice based on their individual data. Patients use DiabetesManager to track food consumption and blood sugar levels. The technology also allows providers to monitor patients remotely.
Results: In one Washington, D.C. pilot, DiabetesManager reduced ER visits and hospital stays by 58 percent on average compared to the previous year — when they weren’t using the program.
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