mHealth Summit 2014: An Ecosystem of Opportunity

I am currently attending the mHealth Summit 2014 being held at Gaylord Hotel Resort and Convention Center. I am amazed how a big conference like this has been well planned and organized as well as how efficiently and effectively is it being controlled and managed.

Last year’s attendees of the Summit come from more than 60 countries. Like before, it focuses in at least 18 areas namely: Aging in Place; Business; Disease Management; Disruptive Care Models; Finance and Investment; Games for Health; Global Health; M2M; Mobile Commerce; Personalized Medicine; Pharma / Biotech; Policy Issues; Privacy, Security & Identity; Reimbursement; Research; Startup / New to Market; Technology; and Wellness, Fitness and Prevention.

Belonging to at least seven (7) industry affiliations, the number of attendees is identified with the following: Technology/Mobile Operator/Carrier, 30%; Healthcare Organization/Insurance Company/Payer, 20%; Association/Non-Profit/NGO and CBO, 13%; Public Health/Medicine/Pharmaceutical Company, 5%; International Agency/International Corporation, 4%; Marketing/Media/Press, 4%; and Federal or State Government, 2%.

Ten (10) sectors are represented namely: Academic Researchers; Content and Application Developers; Device and Technology Vendors; Mobile Operators / Carriers; NGOs and International Organizations; Not-for-Profit Organizations; Payers; Policy and Regulatory Leaders (U.S. & Abroad); Private Sector; and Providers / Healthcare Systems;

When identified functionally, the attendees fulfill the following roles in the industry: (mHealth Summit website)

The mHealth Summit 2014 started last Sunday (December 7^th) and will end tomorrow (December 11^th). I have visited many of the booths at the Exhibit Floor and hope to see all of them before the end of the conference.

I have also attended some of the seminars. What attracted me the most was the session on the Apple HealthKit platform. As a user of Apple mobile products I got interested because the platform as described by Apple itself, offers the ability to track and share a vast range of health, fitness, and medical data points across multiple apps and devices. It can be used as a wellness and fitness tool – aggregating data about diet, activity, exercise, and sleep from multiple sources – as well as a serious medical tool for managing and monitoring chronic conditions.

According to Apple, as a medical tool, HealthKit offers tremendous value for a few different reasons. It can aggregate data from a range of apps or connected medical devices, like a glucose meter or blood pressure cuff, as well as consumer-oriented fitness devices. It also offers the ability to automate the recording of medical metrics. If you're using connected devices, this helps to ensure the accuracy of the data because it goes straight from the device to the associated app on your iPhone and then into HealthKit. If your doctor's office uses an electronic records system that supports HealthKit, that data can then be automatically entered into your medical record.

“For the most part, you don’t interact with HealthKit directly. The platform is really little more than a data store on your iPhone, and apps can write information into and pull information out of it. Some apps do both, though others may only input data or retrieve it. 

Most of the actual processing of HealthKit data—comparing the calories you've eaten with the number you've burned throughout the course of the day, getting data from a fitness tracker or other device, or compiling information and sending it to your doctor—is done in the third party apps that send information to and retrieve it from HealthKit.”