I'm here at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas at the Mobile Health Expo and instead of swimming or playing the slots I'm listening to talks on the state of the art of mobile health and talking to vendors. Actually its a very interesting and informative way to spend some time since many people think that mobile health is the next new thing.
Mobile health is essentially using a mobile device (cell phone, hand-held scanner, ipad, etc.) to do something involved in the health field, so it is a pretty broad area. That 'something' could be tracking your platelet count on your phone, a nurse entering chart information on his/her phone, having your phone do an ultrasound that you can then send to your doctor, getting reminders on your phone to take your medicine, and most anything else creative types can imagine.
As with the early days of the internet, the technology is far ahead of the applications that can deliver something that is useful to a large number of people. But, just as with the Internet, in time, one of the many start-ups will probably come up with an application that may be as big as Google or Facebook.
AT&T is developing partnerships in the mobile health area and looking at it as a strategic direction. PriceWaterhouseCoopers is also represented at the meeting. On the other end of the investment perspective, I heard that Dr. Oz is developing an application for your phone to guide you to the best provider for your symptoms, sort of an expert doctor selector, an application I need to investigate further.
Later today I'm going to attend a session on nutrition. In other conversations anything outside of drugs, doctors, or hospitals has been excluded, so I'm interested in what this one is about.
I'll be writing more on this subject later this week and for the Platelet News. Just shows you that some things that happen in Las Vegas don't need to stay here.
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