Check out my new blog post on Health2Social.com on the issues facing innovation in mHealth: In Fast Company Magazine’s February issue there is article titled “As Smartphones Get Smarter, You May Get Healthier: How mHealth Can Bring Cheaper Health Care To All.” The piece, by Adam Bluestein, is a survey of thenew disruptive innovations in the mHealth market that can potentially replace large, clunky, and expensive medical devices with small, elegant, and low-cost Smartphone accessories. The article touches briefly on one of the main challenges mHealth faces as it aims to grow its chunk of the $273 billion medical device industry from its current $2 billion market share. As mentioned in the article: “At stake is the future of health care–and a share of the $273 billion medical-device industry, which is dominated by the likes of GE and Philips.” What is obvious here is that GE and Philips will not be happy with disruption from the startups which have the potential to replace their high cost devices. One of the biggest setbacks for innovation would be if these larger companies use their millions in cash reserve to lobby Congress to create more regulations that can potentially stall the influx of these new cheaper devices. As Bluestein discusses in the article, the “clunky-looking device eye doctors use to pinpoint your prescription–weighs about 40 pounds, costs $10,000” – and can be replaced by a similar functioning $30 accessory that can attach to your iPhone.
