mHEALTH Summit 2013 and CES DIGITAL Summit 2014

Healthcare is the hottest issue not only in Washington, D.C. but also in the entire United States.  Occupying the politicians is the debate on the Affordable Care Act or what is commonly dubbed as OBAMACARE.

From causing the government shutdown earlier to the glitches in the rollout of the Healthcare insurance program, its importance and role cannot be ignored.

Mobile devices are the hottest gadgets today.  They are the devices of choice by the majority of the world’s population be they consumers, enterprises, health enthusiasts and patients, health providers, and policy-makers.

Users choose mobile and electronic devices for their utility and functional features as well as the software applications that are available in these devices.  For this, our world has been dubbed as the “Planet of the Apps.”

This interest in Healthcare, Mobile, and Digital devices and Apps must have been the reason for the two summits being held in the next two months.

The first is the mHealth Summit on December 8-11, 2013 at the National Harbor, Washington, D.C.; and the second is the International CES Digital Health Summit to be held on January 7-10, 2014 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

I plan to attend both summits as a credentialed member of the Press representing Asian Journal USA again.  Attended by representatives from more than 150 countries, it would be exciting to meet people of varied cultures but with similar interests in the Healthcare, Mobile, and Digital fields.

Mobilization and digitization via online networks have indeed made it easier for healthcare providers to communicate and share their expertise and localize global health knowledge as well as globalizing local health knowledge.

As I have done in the past, I will be looking for new health products and technologies that fall under what I call “Little Miracles, Magic, or Mind-Boggling Technologies.”

The mHealth Summit is noted for being the event “where Technology, Business, Research, and Policy connect.”  It is the largest of its kind.  It brings together “leaders in government, the private sector, industry, academia, providers and not-for-profit organizations from across the mHealth ecosystems to advance collaboration in the use of wireless technology to improve health outcomes in the United States and abroad.”

This year, mHealth Summit is expected to get participants like me to experience 6 Keynotes; 100 Educational Sessions; 400+ Exhibitors; 5,500+ Attendees and exclusive co-located events such as: MHealth in the Hospital Symposium; Health 2.0 Symposium; Pharma Roundtable; Games for Health Workshop; ONC Town Hall Meeting; M2M Now Workshop; Policy Forum; NIH Training Institute; and WIP Jam.

Because of my legal background, I am particularly interested in the sessions that deal with “developing an appropriate legal infrastructure that is essential for all executives, practitioners and organizations seeking to implement electronic health records, introduce mobile devices into the enterprise, and comply with federal health care statutes and regulations.”

The meaning of health law and how legal principles are applied to the use of mobile devices in health care are subjects that I would like to explore.

I hope to know more about the legal framework for managing security and risk in the mobile device ecosystem; the legal aspects of Telemedicine; the role of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics in Health Care in the U.S. and abroad; and emerging legal issues when protected health information is stored in the Cloud.

These are all subjects in the scheduled sessions I intend to participate in.

The CES Digital Health Summit 2014 in Las Vegas is supposed to be the conference where “Health and Technology Transform Lives.”  A conference plus 4 days of exhibition, the Summit focuses on the emerging market of consumer-based digital health and wellness devices, related applications and services. 

Like last year and previous ones, the event will expose developers, manufacturers, distributors and service providers to the opportunities, partnerships, business models, distribution channels, and standards of the rapidly evolving industry of digital health technologies.

The topics and the corresponding speakers at the conference are quite interesting.  One session deals with “Point-of-Care Everywhere”.  Tele-health systems, seamless experiences between devices, meeting patients and consumers exactly where they are, are the areas of focus in this session.

Another session deals with the topic “Loudmouth Patients: Making Noise and Making Change.” The focus here is about empowering the patient.  The brochure says, “The empowered patient is not a new concept, but now more than ever, patient and physician influencers are armed to advocate for better care and to impact decision-making on a broader scale.  Join a leading journalist, a social analyst and two of the loudest mouth patients we know for an explosive conversation, as they make huge strides in advocating for all of us.” I might attend this one.

The last session is on “The Radical Hospital”.  Speakers will be discussing cutting-edge surgical spider robots, augmented reality guided clinical applications, RFID biometric-tracked patients, physiological monitoring, artificial intelligence – just a few of the radical technologies making their way into hospital.  We are supposed to hear first-hand how these innovations are changing the way medicine is practiced and how they are saving money and saving lives.

It is probably in this session that I would get some leads as to what health technologies could qualify as “miracles, magic or mind-boggling.”