Thursday, January 20, 2011
Fat Nation: The cost of obesity...$450 Billion and growing....
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Smartphones emerge in new health care role.
When the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle approached me to contribute an article on emerging healthcare trends in their "Speaking Out" edit page today focused on Health Care, I decided to write about something which I had alluded to in an earlier blogpost on this blog: Good bye Doctor! Hello Smart Phone!
Here's the article as it appeared in the paper today:
Smartphones emerge in new health care role.
Deepak Seth • Guest essayist • January 9, 2011
Move out of the way, Doctor! Just when you thought rising liability insurance costs and declining Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements were your biggest worries, you have a new one emerging on the horizon — the evolution of the smartphone into a primary care physician.
The scenario is not as farfetched as it sounds. A recent survey by Pew on the adoption rate of mobile health ("mHealth") applications found that a full 9 percent of American mobile phone users said they have mobile health apps on their phones that enable them to "track" or "manage" their health. Other studies predict that more than a third of 1.4 billion smartphone users in 2015 will be running some kind of mobile health care application.
Smartphone and other mobile health care apps include those for diabetes and other chronic diseases' management, and hospital-based Radio Frequency Identification.
Smartphone health care apps seem set to emerge as a differentiator in the increasingly competitive health care marketplace as health care players such as insurance and pharmaceutical companies queue to launch their own apps or co-branded apps as promotional tools or potential revenue streams.
Joining the bandwagon are telecom and technology companies that will attempt to get into the health care sector now that they have a foot in the door through their control of the newly emerging health care delivery platform — the smartphone. Opportunities may exist for health care players to work out collaborative agreements with telecom players to leverage each other's strengths.
Doctor, no reason, though, to lose heart yet. Nearly half of smartphone and mHealth applications are designed for health care providers aiming at improving their effectiveness and efficiency in areas such as continued medical education programs, health care management and remote monitoring applications.
Seth, of Brighton, is an information technology and business intelligence expert.
Here's the article as it appeared in the paper today:
Smartphones emerge in new health care role.
Deepak Seth • Guest essayist • January 9, 2011
Move out of the way, Doctor! Just when you thought rising liability insurance costs and declining Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements were your biggest worries, you have a new one emerging on the horizon — the evolution of the smartphone into a primary care physician.
The scenario is not as farfetched as it sounds. A recent survey by Pew on the adoption rate of mobile health ("mHealth") applications found that a full 9 percent of American mobile phone users said they have mobile health apps on their phones that enable them to "track" or "manage" their health. Other studies predict that more than a third of 1.4 billion smartphone users in 2015 will be running some kind of mobile health care application.
Smartphone and other mobile health care apps include those for diabetes and other chronic diseases' management, and hospital-based Radio Frequency Identification.
Smartphone health care apps seem set to emerge as a differentiator in the increasingly competitive health care marketplace as health care players such as insurance and pharmaceutical companies queue to launch their own apps or co-branded apps as promotional tools or potential revenue streams.
Joining the bandwagon are telecom and technology companies that will attempt to get into the health care sector now that they have a foot in the door through their control of the newly emerging health care delivery platform — the smartphone. Opportunities may exist for health care players to work out collaborative agreements with telecom players to leverage each other's strengths.
Doctor, no reason, though, to lose heart yet. Nearly half of smartphone and mHealth applications are designed for health care providers aiming at improving their effectiveness and efficiency in areas such as continued medical education programs, health care management and remote monitoring applications.
Seth, of Brighton, is an information technology and business intelligence expert.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Frugal Innovation/Jugaad Edition # 3
From the Jan-Feb edition of Harvard Business Review(New Business Models in Emerging Markets) as reported in the Wall Street Journal:
Chamak : A Laundry Service that is designed to serve those fed up with doing laundry themselves. Their current choices: A cheap but potentially unhygienic dhobi (washerman) or an unaffordable fancy launderette or dry cleaner. Both take several days.
From an economic standpoint, setting up a chain of self-service laundries was deemed too expensive to make a decent return.
Their solution: Portable, seven-foot-square kiosks with a front-loading washer and dryer, with an independent water supply, placed where there is most foot traffic. Customers drop off their clothes to be washed, dried and ironed in 24 hours.The company can charge 50 rupees (slightly less than $1) for a kilogram of clothing. And they'll SMS you when they are done! The service now has 5,000 customers patronizing 20 booths in Mumbai, Bangalore and Mysore.
ChotuKool from Godrej & Boyce: this little refrigerator, which holds just a few products and can run on a battery during power cuts
.
Chamak : A Laundry Service that is designed to serve those fed up with doing laundry themselves. Their current choices: A cheap but potentially unhygienic dhobi (washerman) or an unaffordable fancy launderette or dry cleaner. Both take several days.
From an economic standpoint, setting up a chain of self-service laundries was deemed too expensive to make a decent return.
Their solution: Portable, seven-foot-square kiosks with a front-loading washer and dryer, with an independent water supply, placed where there is most foot traffic. Customers drop off their clothes to be washed, dried and ironed in 24 hours.The company can charge 50 rupees (slightly less than $1) for a kilogram of clothing. And they'll SMS you when they are done! The service now has 5,000 customers patronizing 20 booths in Mumbai, Bangalore and Mysore.
ChotuKool from Godrej & Boyce: this little refrigerator, which holds just a few products and can run on a battery during power cuts
.
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