The Journal of mHealth Vol 1 Issue 1 (Feb 2014) | Page 26

News Highlights from the
2013 mHealth Summit
WebMD Health Corp the leading
source of health information, announced at the mHealth Summit
that it is expanding the beta program for its Patient Instructions
feature, which enables physicians
who use Medscape Mobile to securely send education and instructions on thousands of conditions,
procedures and drugs to their patients who use the WebMD app
for iPhone, or access WebMD on
a PC or other mobile device.
“WebMD is partnering with innovative companies like Qualcomm
and developing new products and
services like Patient Instructions
to make health information more
actionable and accelerate consumer-provider connectivity,” said
David Schlanger, Chief Executive
Officer at WebMD. “As consumers and providers assume more
financial risk for the provision of
care, WebMD believes that facilitating this kind of engagement is
essential to producing quality outcomes and reducing the cost of
care.”
Qualcomm Life and WebMD
first announced plans to enable
consumers to upload biometric
data to WebMD in an effort to
proactively manage health and
fitness, as well as chronic health
conditions such as obesity and
diabetes, at the HIMMS confer-

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February 2014

ence in March 2013. WebMD will
introduce its new app and set of
services that deliver personalised
content and actionable insights,
as well as a new online storefront
where consumers will be able to
purchase a variety of biometric
devices from the industry’s leading providers, in the first quarter
of 2014.
“WebMD is uniquely positioned
to facilitate consumer-provider
connectivity and accelerate the
roll-out of quantified health solutions to the masses,” said Bill
Pence, EVP, Chief Technology
Officer and Chief Operating Officer, WebMD. “Our Patient Instructions service will enable
consumers and their providers to
jointly manage their care, and our
partnership with Qualcomm Life
will provide consumers with a
more personalised WebMD experience that makes biometric data
more actionable.”
As part of the expanded Patient
Instructions beta, Medscape providers can simply select from a set
of over 4,200 clinically reviewed
patient instructio