mHealth: Closing the Gap Between Promise and Adoption

Stakeholders at this week's third annual mHealth Summit in the Washington, D.C., area touted the potential of mobile health technology to improve health care quality, increase patient centeredness and reduce costs. However, they also acknowledged that while mobile tools have helped revolutionize nearly every other industry in the U.S., the health care field has lagged behind.

The mHealth Summit -- which was presented by the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health in partnership with the mHealth Alliance, the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society and NIH -- attracted nearly 3,600 attendees from 46 states and 48 countries, up from 2,400 attendees last year...

...Rick Cnossen -- director of worldwide health information technology at Intel -- said he believes in the next 10 years 50% of health care could provided through the "brickless clinic," be it the home, community, workplace or even car. Cnossen said the technology -- such as mobile tools, telehealth, personal health records and social networking -- already exists to make this possible. He said, "We have the technology. ... It's time to move out on it."...