The majority of today’s mHealth smartphone applications fall into the category of general health tracking and fitness tools. Generally these apps have a low to medium sophistication level. Chronically ill people have not yet been the focus of today’s app developers. This will change with the entrance of traditional health industry players into the mHealth app market.

With the potential for sophisticated monitoring, compliance, time-management and a host of other applications to improve healthcare delivery to chronically ill patients, mHealth solutions promise to bring significant advances in the management of chronic diseases. In addition the target group size is very impressive. According to the OECD and WHO there are more than 2 billion patients with chronic diseases worldwide.

Chronic disease is a major cost-driver in developed countries. In the US the cost of treating chronic disease constitutes is 83% of total Medicaid and 96% of the total Medicare expenditure (source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). In some countries healthcare expenditure on a person with one chronic condition is double that of expenditure on someone without a chronic condition.

From the data above, we can see why established healthcare players are bringing out first pilot apps.

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