This is a live blog post from the mHealth Summit. The summit is taking place from December 5-7th at the Gaylord National Convention Center, National Harbor, MD.
This is a live blog post, as such the notes are made in real time and posted with minimal editing. I am sharing these via Facebook, Twitter and my blog to help others get a snapshot of the activities at the conference. You can follow the tweet stream at #MHS11 or follow the mHealth Summit's twitter account @mhealthsummit.
Session 5 | 2:15–3:15 PM |
Open Standards for mHealth Interoperability in Severely Resource-Constrained Environments
Many of the world’s funders of mHealth programs are interested in seeing international standards adopted by tools providers in order to expand the reach of programs they are currently supporting. To identify and decide on the appropriate standards is one of the key focus areas for the funders and implementers of national scale mHealth deployments. NetHope is undertaking a study for PEPFAR on this topic and they are interested in using the findings to initiate a broader discussion with industry stakeholders. Preliminary documentation will be published on HealthUnbound.org for review prior to this panel discussion.
Many of the world’s funders of mHealth programs are interested in seeing international standards adopted by tools providers in order to expand the reach of programs they are currently supporting. To identify and decide on the appropriate standards is one of the key focus areas for the funders and implementers of national scale mHealth deployments. NetHope is undertaking a study for PEPFAR on this topic and they are interested in using the findings to initiate a broader discussion with industry stakeholders. Preliminary documentation will be published on HealthUnbound.org for review prior to this panel discussion.
| Moderator | |||||
 Fredrik Winsnes Healthcare Working Group Lead NetHope |  Alice Borrelli Director Intel |  Michael Gehron PEPFAR HIS Coordinator Deapartment of State |  Jonathan Jackson CEO Dimagi, Inc. |  Derek Ritz Principal ecGroup Inc. |
Good News / Bad News.
- Good: Projects are proliferating
- Bad: Projects do not interoperate
Discussion group on mhealth alliance web site. This session is to start a discussion.
NetHope doing a study for Department of State in the use of open standards.
Michael Gehron:
mHealth Apps are like piles of bottles of water rather than a reservoir
Info systems are developed as part of wider initiatives
Assistance is provided in an emergency setting that over rides long term needs.
Derek Ritz:
Deliverable: A design Specification onhow selected interoperability standards may be adopted.
NO NEW STANDARDS!
Leverage and extend artefacts from MNCH Framework and active projects.
Use Case Story defined business need. Processes were defined using UML.
Use cases based on maternity community care event in Africa - A real requirement from an active project.
Check out HUB on mHealth Alliance. Provide feedback to design team.
Jonathan Jackson:
Dimagi founded in 2002 at Harvard and MIT Media Lab. An Open Source software company.
Co-Developed national medical record system for Zambia Smartcare.
Co-founded: OpenROsa and JavaRosa, RapidSMS, CommCare, Coded in Country Initiative.
Tend to integrate more than interoperate.
See little demand for plug and play interoperability.
Little capacity to consume interoperability standards.
Better to focus on open and available data than standards
But... they still think standards are great.
Contracts should demand vendors provide one-click download of data.
Facebook and Twitter do not follow standards but they are massively consumed.
Alice Borrelli:
Personal Connected Health
244 companies that have developed and adopted inter connected devices/systems.
40+ products certified.
Established 5 years ago and now starting to see solutions hit the market.
Personal Connected Healthcare can:
- reduce mortality: 35-56%
- hospitalization: -47%
- 6 day reduction in hospital stays
- 40-64% reduction in physician time performing checks.
Continua does not create standards.Depend on standards bodies to do so.
[This seems to be an odd statement since they are developing a standard for interoperability with EHR platforms.]
Singapore and Japan are adopting Continua as requirement for devices interoperating with national health record platforms.
Special pricing for non-profits and emerging market companies.
Generic interoperability can lead to us missing the problem. Trade-off between functionality and interoperability.
Confusion between interoperability and the ability for applications to work together. e.g. Google Maps, Twitter, Facebook APIs.
Point to Point strategies perish with scale.
Did this panel really address the issue of "Severely-resource constrained environments"
We need to make sure standards are Open and light weight. If not this will limit adoption in end user devices and increase their cost.
Simple, Lightweight, Open. That will make easy adoption. Simple on the Internet wins.
1 in 10 medical procedures result in an error that is medically adverse. Standards help us drive towards the levels seen in Aerospace and other high reliability industries.
((tag: mHealth, mHealth Summit, Mobile))
