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QUESTIONSANDANSWERS DR WALID G. TOHME


Health conference during the Hospital Build Congress to discuss progress on the strategy set at Arab Health in January.


Principal at Booz&co., Beirut, Lebanon The Middle East is an innovative region, ahead of its times by far. While the world works via text messages in the mHealth space, the region is focused on remote monitoring, diagnosis and e-prescriptions. The pace is escalating enormously via stakeholder support. Stakeholders took a positive decision at Arab Health this January, but how have policy makers, government and industry leaders progressed? What have we achieved in the past six months and how have we moved a step closer to implementation? Dr Tohme is delivering the opening keynote speech at the the m+


Q. What’s next for mHealth in this region? A. mHealth has gained significant attention recently as it is the convergence of healthcare with telecom and media developments. Today every major public and private healthcare, and telecom CEO and CIO is looking at how to participate in this trend. It may be helpful to look at what is driving this interest:  Today there are over 5 billion wireless subscribers; over 70% of them reside in low- and middle income countries  Commercial wireless signals cover over 85% of the world’s population, extending far beyond the reach of the electrical grid and the road network  mHealth has the potential to provide higher quality patient outcomes while reducing medical errors, which are estimated to cost the U.S. $19.5 billion annually  Analysts are estimating mHealth’s potential value to be up to USD 10 billion within the next five years  There are more than 5000 medical apps on iTunes store. Healthcare delivery systems are becoming increasingly unsustainable in both developed and emerging markets:  In developed markets, an ageing population and evolving nature of medical conditions have shifted the focus to the long-term management of chronic conditions for a greater number of patients. As a result, spending on healthcare is increasing to unsustainable levels  In contrast, emerging markets are facing a significant shortage of trained medical staff, which has resulted in insufficient access to basic medical care.


Both are resulting in an opportunity for mHealth. 008 HOSPITAL BUILD & INFRASTRUCTURE mHEALTH SUPPLEMENT 2012


Q. What advice would you give a clinic that wants to add mHealth to their services? A. mHealth means many things to many people so first the clinic needs to define what goals it wants to serve through mHealth. Is it to improve quality of care, reduce cost or improve access? Once these have been defined, a strategy can be developed to ensure that what it develops in terms of service aligns to these goals. The key is launch services in a phased manner but always keep the end goal in mind, which should be of integrating mHealth into the daily practice of care. In the absence of making it seamless for the physicians and patients to use, mHealth will not take off.


Q. How can mHealth benefit patients with a chronic illness? A. mHealth can definitely help patients with chronic diseases and many applications are geared towards home care. Examples include diabetes management through blood glucose and pulse oxygen monitoring. This type of disease management is key to improving patient care in that it has the potential for preventing hospitalizations, and of course, reducing the cost of care.


Q. What has been achieved in the last six months, and are we closer to implementation of mHealth in this region? A. There have been significant efforts recently in the region but it is important to understand that there are key characteristics that are inherent to emerging markets that have to be recognized, including the low degree of development of the healthcare infrastructure and regulatory environment and the rapid growth in mobile penetration. As such, the mHealth solutions have focused on simpler delivery such as delivery of medical information by SMS or MMS, medicine reminders, remote data collection, and medical help-lines, to improve patients’ access to basic medical care. +


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