The Journal of mHealth Vol 3 Issue 1 (Feb/Mar 2016) | Page 10

7 Digital Trends for Healthcare in 2016
Continued from page 7

In more malicious episodes then hospitals may also fall prey to
ransomware intrusions and other more targeted hacks, which
are intended to reveal patient or financial data, or, to extort for
financial gain.
Data losses are also a huge problem at the moment across
healthcare and as patient records command substantial prices
on the black market this trend is unlikely to abate without proactive steps being taken by the industry to reduce or mitigate
cyber intrusions.
One of the biggest threats to healthcare systems remains the
human element in what are known as non-malicious, unintended
threats. These often occur when hospital staff innocently plug
an infected USB device into a hospital system or attempt to
charge smartphones and other electronics using USB outlets
on workstations or medical devices. These seemingly innocuous actions can in many cases result in widespread disruption to
hospital networks through the introduction of viruses or malware onto the wider system.
While the circumstances vary, the result of the headlines that we
all saw during 2015, reporting healthcare hacks and data losses,
means that cybersecurity has become a major priority for healthcare organisations and medical manufacturers.

6

Improving User Experiences

Many first and second generation connected health
solutions have suffered from issues like overly complex operation, the need for specialist user training and complicated setup processes, as well as short battery life and poor user
experiences, all of which have contributed to low adoption rates
and even lower user loyalty.
Solution developers have recognised that this as a problem
which means that the range of devices and services that are
now beginning to emerge behave in a much more proficient and
intuitive way. The hope is that this will encourage healthcare
professionals, patients and consumers to more easily interact
with, and operate, these technologies and as a result increase the
rate of adoption and ultimately improve outcomes.
There are some fundamental lessons that the industry has learnt
from the technologies of the past few years:
»» The device/solution must work the moment the user/
patient gets it, with no setup, no assembly, no downloads
and no syncing required.
»» Solutions need to make the data collection process easy,
and ideally automated, to ensure minimum additional
effort from the user.
»» Taking the data and using it to provide meaningful insight
is imperative. Without providing intelligent analysis and
recommendation there is very little value to a technology.
This applies as much to a doctor as it does to a patient.
»» In the case of devices, wearables and remote solutions, the
solution or device should be used in the exact same way as
the regular non-connected version of the device, making it

8

February/March 2016

simple for the user to migrate to the connected solution.
»» The battery in the device should last for as long as possible -- ideally multiple months -- without needing to be
recharged.
»» By adopting these strategies we are going to find that digital
health solutions gain significantly more traction with users
and have a much greater benefit in terms of the application
for which they were designed.

7

Personalisation of Digital
Services

It is becoming widely accepted that in order to
improve the adoption of digital health solutions,
and encourage continued engagement with these technologies,
it is essential to create a personal experience. The technology
needs to adapt to the specific requirements of the end user and
then make intelligent decisions based upon those individual
preferences. Be it a healthcare professional using a clinical decision tool or a patient using a condition management application,
by creating a personal experience designers and manufacturers
can significantly improve the benefit that these technologies can
have in their respective applications.
Many digital health solutions already incorporate a degree of
personalisation, but what we can expect to find going forward
is that this will become a standard, with many more developers combining aggregated data with artificial intelligence and
machine learning solutions in order to provide a much greater
level of intelligence with which their solutions can interact with
the end user. n

Some things just...
...stand out from the crowd

Global Digital Health 100
The most innovative companies
in the field of digital health
Nominations for 2016 now open, for more
information please visit www.thejournalofmhealth.com