Next week I’ll be speaking at Mobile Health Expo (MHX) in Las Vegas and I had these thoughts to share in advance of the event and my presentation.

As you can imagine, Mobile Health is a big space and healthcare worldwide is capturing the attention of many organizations, governments, and of course citizens – people like you and me – all interested in a better life whether technologically induced or not.

The breadth and depth of organizations represented at MHX is staggering and the impact of simple strategic development decisions such as native apps versus web apps, are certain to create some interesting debate and education. Security issues in health whether mobile or otherwise are overwhelming and larger mobile infrastructure challenges are seemingly unsolvable. But the world is coming together to try to overcome these and many other challenges and some progress and a lot of new business deals are likely to emerge in the third week of October.

The Keynote …

This event starts with a trifecta of US mobile providers – a keynote tag-team including Sprint, AT&T, and T-Mobile will present their views and strategies concerning mobile services in the health industry.

Big, Audacious Content Distribution Challenges …

At a global level (and much grander scale) are presentations from people like Ronald E. LaPorte, PhD. who is directing a World Health Organization Collaborating Center at the University of Pittsburgh. Mr. LaPorte comments,

During the past few years we have set out to double the world’s knowledge about Global Health and Prevention in collaboration with the World Health Organization.

He goes on to say …

Our model is very simple.  We have built a network of 46,000 primary academic faculty from 172 countries.  From this network we have extracted 4500 of their best lectures that they use for teaching. We then feed back the lectures in an open source free library of lectures.  The lectures provide up to date materials that educators can easily use world wide, by taking 5 of my slides, 7 of yours and 10 of their own. It helps seasoned educators like me by allowing me to teach in areas that I am not an expert, it also reduces preparation time from 15 hours to 2.  It also helps the new teacher who is very nervous and often has bad materials.  Finally, it helps those in resource poor centers, such as in developing countries where often materials are 10 years old.  We have lectures by 20 Nobel Prize winners, the former head of the NIH and CDC, leaders at WHO, etc. We call our program the Supercourse (www.pitt.edu/~super1)

Mr. LaPorte’s challenge is huge – how does he manage to make all this healthcare content available at a mobile device level? While I have no clue how this will be accomplished, I greatly admire the problem. Ideas like this are the great ideas that will change the world in ways that simply make it better.

Politics and the [Mobile] Healthcare Industry …

Legislation and upcoming elections are likely to impact mobile healthcare industry and a variety of sessions are devoted to political impact on mobile health.  Billed as the only event focusing on the convergence of mobile technology and healthcare across the entire mobile health ecosystem, recently announced an impressive array of speakers that will address the government regulatory environment and the impact of legislation, compliance and policy on mobile health.

Technology innovation and healthcare reform have heightened the interest and demand for mobile health technology.  Mobile Health Expo organizers have assembled speakers with backgrounds in regulation, compliance and public policy to address such questions as:

  • How does federal and state legislation impact mobile health?
  • How will current and future policy discussions be played out in the upcoming elections?
  • What role does the FDA play in regulating mobile health applications and devices?
  • What are the regulatory compliance strategies for mobile health products?

If you’re in healthcare and you have a few days to spare, this is an event not to be missed. Look me up when you get into town, I have a corporate Starbucks card and I’d love to see if it can be maxed out.

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