The Journal of mHealth Vol 1 Issue 6 (Dec 2014) | Page 30

Conference News Digital Health Community Comes Together for mHealth Summit 2014 The Journal of mHealth team was pleased to be able to attend this year’s HIMSS mHealth Summit, earlier this month. The event, which is the largest of its kind in the industry, gathered together a uniquely diverse international delegation, representing all areas of the mobile and connected health community. For anyone who was unable to attend the event or who missed parts of the packed schedule, we have compiled a round-up of some of the key topics on discussion which ranged from wellness, fitness and disease management to population health, clinical trials, emergency services, regulation, public health, investment, healthcare access and disparities. The Market for mHealth A significant focus of the event was on key market trends and the potential future growth areas in the mHealth arena. Speaking in the panel session ‘Untapped mHealth Markets’ Milos Todorovic of Lux Research made some very interesting points that related to some of the developments we can expect in the mHealth market, in the foreseeable future. One of these predictions was that as the acceptance of digital within healthcare environments begins to mature, we are likely to see a significant shift in the size of the market for clinical facing solutions, rather than purely consumer based services and products. 28 December 2014 This is significant, as in recent years investment and healthcare venture funding has tended to focus on digital solutions targeted at a consumer audience, as the barriers to widespread adoption in the consumer space are generally less than their clinical counterparts, and as such solutions can often be commercialised more rapidly. Todorovic suggested that, going forward, this consumer audience will remain attractive given the size and potential returns, but that the future of the market may present its own set of difficulties. One particular problem in the consumer space is that usage often wanes very quickly, leaving solution developers to continually work on new ways of encouraging consumers to engage with a product or service. Todorovic therefore recommends that digital health developers approach this issue by developing platform based technologies, built around established products and services, that will allow them to target an initial audience of consumer users, whilst being flexible enough to allow them to, in the future, pivot towards the clinical audience, as this market matures. Developers should try to incorporate features that prepare for this clinical transition from the early stages. This could mean, collecting evidence (beginning with the results of small pilot trials before gradually introducing more robust clinical trial data), preparing for regulatory conditions,