Mobile technology is increasingly facilitating the way consumers worldwide spend, save, learn and monitor their health, says Andrea Monteiro, director of the Mobile Health Conference and Expo which is taking place next month in Dubai.
“There are many mobile healthcare programmes being launched successfully around the world from Boston to Bengaluru”, says Andrea. She continues: “There is also a huge amount of interest among consumers for mobile services in the money, education and agricultural sectors, as a result there is a huge need amongst companies for tools and training to be able to launch and scale mobile lifeline services. Mobile Health 2011 brings together experts in the realm of innovative apps and services, regulators, healthcare providers, pharma companies, governments and MNOs to share their success stories and the lessons they have learnt in the market place so far.”
Orange Austria’s RPMS
Orange Austria is one company that has already made a success of its Mobile Health (mHealth) services and will present its experience at the Mobile Health Conference and Expo in October. Jeurgen Pillinger is the company’s New Business Development Manager: “What we have done in the last year and a half is to set up a remote patient monitoring system for the chronic diseases diabetes and hypertension. Following a 12 month trial, we went live in June last year and since then we have been selling the program on the market quite successfully. We are now looking forward to expand it to various other diseases like COPD, ECG and looking into the lifestyle and wellness sectors as well.”
Health systems not set up yet
Jeurgen says there are various key challenges facing the mHealth industry in regulated countries such as Austria and the rest of Europe, as the health systems are not yet set up for mHealth services. He explains: “when you talk to doctors they say ‘it is a really good solution, but where are we going to fit it in the regular system of social security?’. Social securities have already allocated some budget in Austria, but they don’t really know how to use it on the various projects there.” The issue of privacy they addressed by “getting everything certified by the data privacy commissions in Austria and to adapt them to new technologies which are now being used in the health system.”
Many opportunities for mHealth
Orange Austria’s Jeurgen Pillinger says mHealth is an exciting new market for the use of mobile technologies: “I think there are various opportunities, from remote patient monitoring, to the lifestyle prevention market to just have someone accompanying your daily life, to ambient assisted living. So I think there are various opportunities for various players and I think we will see quite a lot of people and companies going into the market and doing some really exciting stuff there.”
Other Mobile Health 2011 speakers include:
- Keith Nurcombe, Managing Director, o2 Health, Telefonica
- Krishnan Ganapathy President, Apollo Telemediicne Networking Foundation & President Telemediicne Society of India
- Manish Gupta, CIO, Global Healthcare
- Dr. Zakiuddin Ahmed, National Coordinator for eHealth, Federal Ministry of Health Government of Pakistan
- Thierry Zylberberg, Executive Vice President, Strategic Partnerships and General Manager, Health Business, Orange-France Telecom
- Rezzan Turkoglu, Deputy Manager, Acibadem HealthCare Group
- Dr Sundaram Arulrhaj, President, Sundaram Arulrhaj Hospitals
- Angela Single, Health and Wellness Innovation Lead, BT
- Tikki Gee, Assistant Director, CIO Office, Ministry of Health Holdings Singapore
- Dr Vinod Seetharaman, Program Lead - Healthcare & Life sciences, Global Analytics, Hewlett- Packard
Mobile Health is part of the Connected World Forum which consists of three separate conference streams: Mobile Health, Mobile Money Global and Mobile Life, 500+ attendees and a lively exhibition
Event dates: 31 Oct - 2 Nov
Location: Dubai, UAE
Event website: www.m-healthconference.com
For more information, interviews and media accreditation:
Marketing Manager: Verity Gibbons
Tel. +44 (0)20 7370 8485
Fax. +44 (0)20 7370 8288
Email: mhealth@clarionevents.com
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