#eHealthPromotion, #SaluteSocial

New communications technology has the potential to both disrupt and enhance the pharmaceutical industry, but research shows that pharma often needs to up its game when it comes to the adoption of new technologies.

Mobile devices have transformed how we access and consume content, and are poised to make similarly huge changes to the way consider our health (read “The mHealth App Market is at the Saturation Point”; http://sco.lt/5thWGv). mHealth revenue is projected to reach 26 billion by 2017, and the number of health apps has doubled in just the past two years. Social is also likely to have a major impact in the way that pharma communicates in the coming years. 52% of physician’s surveyed by Deloitte in this research expressed interest in communicating with pharma companies via social media.

However, pharma currently lags behind other verticals for using social media. Pharma spending on digital advertising is far below that of other industries, and it still conducts most of it’s communications with physicians via traditional channels. There is big potential for new communications technology to make the pharmaceutical industry more efficient and more engaged with it’s customers. This infographic from Deloitte shows the potential for new digital technology to allow pharma to market itself more effectively.

Minority of Apps Appear Likely to be Useful in Engaging Patients

[Current pharma apps are at the bottom of this pyramid. As you move up the pyramid, pharma would have a more difficult task to develop useful engaging apps for patients.]

A systematic search of the iOS and Android app stores for a broad set of medical conditions revealed 946 iOS apps and 1,173 Android apps. After removing non-health-care, non-patient-facing, non-English, and highly similar apps, 376 iOS apps and 569 Android apps remained (Exhibit 2).

Of the 376 iOS apps:

• 24 (6%) appeared to have limited engagement beyond traditional media
• 66 (18%) were not relevant to the search condition
• 33 (9%) had poor ratings or reviews, 63 (17%) were last updated prior to 2014
• 29 (8%) were otherwise not assessed to be useful.

Of the 569 Android apps:

• 89 (16%) had limited engagement
• 56 (10%) were not relevant to the search condition
• 8 (1%) had poor ratings or reviews, 200 (35%) were last updated prior to 2014
• 64 (11%) were otherwise not assessed to be useful.

In all, 161 (43%) iOS apps and 152 (27%) Android apps were assessed as possibly useful, of which 126 apps existed on both platforms.

“I don’t see why anybody wants ‘em!. . ./They are just impossible to control!?What’s the matter with. . . .mobile health apps??. . . today?” When it isn’t Dick V...

The results of this year’s mHealth App Developer Economics 2016 study show a steep increase in competition level among mHealth app publishers. The supply side of mHealth apps is measured in the number of available apps and publishers. They are growing significantly faster than the demand side which is quantified by the number of mHealth app downloads.

The number of mHealth apps and active mHealth app publishers has seen strong growth since 2015. This year, the total number of mHealth apps listed on major app stores across the globe grew by 57% to 259,000 apps. This impressive growth is based on three main developments; the growing number of mHealth app publishers, the increased importance of multi-platform app publishing and the expansion of existing mHealth app portfolios.

The number of mHealth app publishers grew in line with the number of apps. There are currently 58,000 mHealth app publishers app on major app stores, 28% more since the beginning of 2015. There appears to be no immediate end to the number of companies rushing into the market to launch their first mHealth app.

In contrast, growth rates of mHealth app store downloads are estimated to be only +7% in 2016, having been +35% the previous year, reaching a total of 3.2B in 2016. This is in line with other app market categories and reflects the fact that growth of capable devices that can download apps has slowed down in most western countries.

As a consequence of this increased competition, it will be even more difficult to stand out and gain significant downloads. Only 14% of mHealth app publishers generated more than 100,000 downloads with their mHealth app portfolio in one year.

With hundreds of new mHealth apps released daily, companies have to consider their app launch as if it were a familiar product in a saturated market.

The number of mobile health applications (mHealth apps) available to consumers now surpasses 165,000 (here). One-fifth of smartphone owners had health apps in 2012, and 7% of primary care physicians recommended a health app.

The FDA has even approved the prescribing of mHealth such as the DiabetesManager System, which captures, stores and transmits blood glucose levels.

Unfortunately, many health apps do not have privacy policies informing users of how personal health data is collected, stored, transmitted, and shared with third parties. Even when there are privacy policies, many health apps do not fully inform patients of how their data will be used or shared.

In a study appearing in the March 8 issue of JAMA, Sarah R. Blenner, J.D., M.P.H., of the Illinois Institute of Technology Chicago-Kent College of Law, Chicago, and colleagues examined the privacy policies of Android diabetes apps and the sharing of health information. They found that 81% of the apps did not have privacy policies. Of the apps with privacy policies, only 4 said they would ask users for permission to share data.

Read more details here.

Autocontrol fotográfico mediante smartphones para mejorar el diagnóstico precoz del melanoma 

Sergio Vañó Galván en Actas Dermosifiliográficas 2014

descargar en  en http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ad.2014.05.009