My assumption is that over time mHealth will grow to more heavily interconnect with consumer driven health plans and healthcare savings (and related) accounts. Two sessions at the recent HIMSS 8th National Medical Banking Institute provided current information which I think Mobility Blog readers will find valuable. Read »

It’s not surprising to learn that health IT workers are among the heaviest users of mobile devices, but it’s encouraging nonetheless to review the latest Forrester research, which finds that 95 percent of healthcare enterprises rely on smartphones for work, usually in addition to laptop computers. Read »

Ann Arbor, Mich.-based Thomson Reuters is beefing up its Clinical Xpert suite of workflow solutions with the launch of its new Pharmacy Intervention solution for hospitals. Although Clinical Xpert has been the category leader for mobile data systems in the Best in KLAS Awards for eight years running, the new software combines real-time clinical surveillance, mobile access to patient data, and Micromedex reference information—all aimed at helping hospital pharmacists identify and document interventions at the point of care, prevent adverse drug events, and reduce medication costs. Read »

Telecom spending in healthcare is expected to increase 44 percent over next three years, from $8.6 billion to $12.4 billion. With wireless applications likely to represent two-thirds of that jump, it's not surprising that HIMSS10 would draw out the wireless industry honchos to bang the drum in support of mobile HIT. Although much of what they had to say you've heard before, it's always worth getting their take on the future of the mobile point of care. Read »

Is a bi-directional mobile software solution what hospitals have been waiting for? Santa Cruz, Calif.-based Validus Medical Systems—which developed its Validus inTouch software system with a team of physicians, software engineers, cloud computing experts, and network security specialists before rolling it out to hospitals—believes so. Read »

A little over a year ago, I wrote how Voalté, which competes with Ascom, Cisco and others, wants to be the central communications engine--or traffic cop--on your healthcare organization's iPhone. This year at HIMSS, the Sarasota, Fla.-based developer of point-of-care communication technology plans to make its Voalté One solution available to Blackberry users, too. Read »

Healthcare tops the FCC's short list of priorities as the independent government agency gears up to deliver its National Broadband Report on March 17. Some are saying the news could be a boon to the telehealth industry, since, among other things, the FCC is calling for expanded reimbursement for e-care, increased pilot programs, revised credentialing requirements, and clarified regulations for converged communications and healthcare devices. Read »

One of the questions about the appropriateness of iPhones in the healthcare space—the role of Flash—the Adobe presentation technology, was answered recently. Steve Jobs commented that Apple's trajectory was toward HTML5. Read »

With the results of a recent Harris Poll indicating that 80 percent of Americans want mobile healthcare services delivered from smart phones, wearable bio-sensors and disease monitoring devices—and research from DataMonitor pegging telehealth spending projections at $6.1 billion in 2012—technology vendors are flocking to the mobile health IT space. Read »

Connected objects, which beyond mobile phones, tablets and laptops can include anything from a camera to a health monitor, are expected to contribute substantially to global healthcare savings. Any device with a mobile connection embedded in it qualifies as a connected object, and with an estimated 20 billion to 50 billion such devices expected to reside on mobile networks globally by 2020, the upshot is that they will help take a bite out of spiraling healthcare costs, which are expected to outpace GDP growth. Read »