The mHealth report also predicted that mobile healthcare monitoring will demonstrate substantial growth in the U.S. and other developed markets.
In developed markets, mobile health monitoring will result into huge cost saving, the report informs.
If Telefónica (TEF) has its way, your knee will one day call your doctor. In partnership with Barcelona's Hospital de la Esperanza, Telefónica has developed a knee brace embedded with motion sensors that enable physicians to monitor patients' rehabilitation remotely after they've been discharged from the hospital. As they exercise, patients—and there are 200 testing the device right now—watch their movements simulated via a 3D avatar on a computer, which wirelessly sends the data to the doctor for view on a PC or cell phone. Telefónica aims to sell the brace to hospitals worldwide when trials are completed by next year.
Conditions like this don’t stifle innovation, they ignite it, and it’s one of the several reasons I think mHealth (“the use of wireless communication devices to support public health and clinical practice”) is different than eHealth (which I’m referring to as desktop Web/computer interaction in health/health care).