The Journal of mHealth Vol 2 Issue 1 (February 2015) | Page 24

Predictions for mHealth in 2015

Predictions for
mHealth in 2015
By Dr Alexander Graham
Dr Alex Graham is a medical doctor by background, having trained in London before entering
the business world. He is currently a founding partner at AbedGraham, a research and strategy
consultancy which assists global IT corporates to navigate the clinical, organisational and commercial
complexities of the UK’s National Health Service (NHS). He is also medical director of EMEA
for Imprivata.
The end of the year always brings great
pause for predictions and thoughts for
the future, and technology is no different, especially in healthcare, as digital and
mobile health have become somewhat
fashionable to talk about. I have read
many articles and discussions about what
will be different in healthcare technology
in 2015, not to mention all the conferences that have taken place around the
turn of the year.
Common consensus seems to be that a
mixture of wearables, complex genomics, nanotechnology and 3D-printing
are going to revolutionise hospitals and
healthcare immediately by promising
everything under the sun without a care
for clinical workflows, business cases or
return on investment studies. I realise
and appreciate that ‘prediction’ articles
are often the time to take a look at the
more exciting and unusual things on the
horizon, but I also can’t help but think
that they frequently add to the hyperbole
and wooliness around such an important
area, and end up actually doing a disservice to the areas they are focused on.
As such, these are my predictions (and
hopes) for clinical technology, which
may not toe the fashionable party lines,
but which will deliver the greatest benefits to digital and mobile health as a
whole.
Sales AND consumption
Something I have ascribed to in my business for some time is that the technology out there works (on a technical level)
as near as makes no difference 100%
of the time, and the problems facing
health IT are predominantly to do with
change management and adoption and
diffusion of technology. Too often

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February 2015

I have seen vendors sell into healthcare
and either the advertised benefits are not
realised or the technology is simply not
used at all, and is left gathering dust in a
store cupboard which is a colossal waste
of resources.

that exists in too many places.
Large vendors will dominate
the market

More and more though I have seen
both healthcare institutions and vendors
focusing on uptake and consumption of
the technology rather than just getting
the sale done and moving onto the next
one. Staff are being remunerated based
on adoption and diffusion, and it is being
highlighted in hospital’s operational IT
plans. This is admirable because the (relatively) easy part is making a sale, the difficult and most important issue is making
sure that the technology delivers what it
says it will