Applications
GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona: Impact on the app market
From: Ralf Gordon Jahns, 21 February 2011
As one of the last times, the companies from the global mobile eco system met during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona from February 14 to 17, 2011. The attendance was a record breaking 60,000 visitors. The event has shown some interesting news which will impact the mobile app market.
Symbian is dead long live Windows7: This is probably the biggest single piece of news to emerge from last week’s event. Windows 7 will be used as the primary OS for Nokia’s smartphone portfolio. According to Mr. Elop (Nokia CEO) there will be a two year transition time before all new devices are being shipped with the OS from Microsoft, but from our discussions with Microsoft and Nokia we realize that there is a large amount of pressure to make that period as short as possible, especially as it will become even more difficult to convince developers to develop for Symbian, a dead end platform. The co-existence of Nokia phones running on WindowsPhone 7, Symbian and MeeGo presents a challenge. The future of MeeGo seems to be very uncertain even though Nokia and Intel stated their intent to offer an alternative platform especially for non smartphone devices. Windows 7 will definitely become a very interesting platform for developers in the future. If it will meet the expectations of those two giants is not clear just yet.
Tablets are everywhere: All major and quite a few smaller OEMs presented their answer to the iPad. They were probably the most touched and intensively tested devices at the MWC. Apple created this new market and sold almost 15 million iPads in only 9 months. Not many analysts forecasted this tremendous success (including us). Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Tab’s successor the Galaxy Tab 10.1 based on Android’s avatar for tablets: Honeycomb. LG, HP, HTC, Motorola, RIM, Lenovo and Toshiba all announced devices at the MWC 2011. RIM plans to release its super Playbook’s WiFi version late in Q1 2011, and HSPA+ and LTE, office software capability, multitasking OS, along with Flash, HTML5 and open internet standards in H2 2011. HP also unveiled Touchpad, a webOS based tablet. ZTE will accelerate its expansion on smart devices by launching lightweight tablets based on Honeycomb which will be due in Q3 2011. Malata, a smaller Chinese vendor, only showed its portfolio of tablets in Barcelona. What it shows: There will be hundreds of tablets launched by the end of 2011. It is going to be the year of the tablets. Make sure your apps look good on them.
Broad awareness for mHealth and home monitoring: mHealth was clearly the biggest cross industry topic on the conference. Most of the OEM and operators as well as big fishes like Qualcomm and IBM showed some of their solutions which make use of a mobile device to support the treatment of a patient. Interesting that most of the mHealth solutions where not smartphone centered but made use of a specific device. Only smaller players which showed their solutions in the health care pavilion where mainly smartphone focused. Home monitoring has been another interesting cross industry area which caught a lot of attention during the week. Telco companies used an entire pavilion, the “Embedded House”, to showcase their offerings. It became clear that the Telco industry will compete against the energy industry in that promising market.
Cross platform development is becoming more visible: It is clear that in the next years developers will face increasing challenges in developing apps for multi app platforms. There are some promising cross platform development tools and platforms out there which should gain more attention in the near future. There are a growing number of companies concentrating on those services such as Service2Media, Mobile Distillery, ideas2mobile and Geniem. Another interesting concept that showcased at the event is Kinoma by Marvell. This could be described as an app store within an app store. Marvell claims that apps running in the Kinoma environment must be developed only once and work on Android and Windows 7 operating systems.
Stay updated with our “Smartphone App Market Monitor”.
Please feel free to comment and share your views on what are the major trends highlighted on during the MWC in Barcelona this year which impacts the smartphone app market.
5 questions to determine if you need a mobile app
From: 60 Second Marketer
If you answer yes to the majority of the questions below, your business should consider using a mobile application in its mobile marketing mix.
- Does your customer base use smartphones? Or can you identify a core group of engaged customers who use smartphones? Market penetration of smartphones is still low and projected to reach around 40% by the year 2015.
- Are you trying to build brand loyalty or awareness? An environment where a customer is only engaging with your brand via a mobile application is great way to increase your brand equity.
- Is your customer base predominantly men between the ages of 18 and 44? Research from eMarketer shows that the smartphone users who are more likely to download mobile applications fall into these two demographic groups. This does not mean that women or people younger than 18 or older than 44 do not download mobile apps, just that they are slightly less likely to do so than the first group.
- Would your mobile marketing tactics benefit from the use of the native features (GPS, camera, Java) of a mobile device? Store locators, bar code scanners or extensive lists of product inventory are best incorporated into mobile apps as opposed to mobile websites.
- Do your customers like to use coupons, shop for in-store specials or are they members of a loyalty program? These are some of the popular functions for mobile apps that retail customers find the most useful.
Augemented Reality App for NBA Playoffs
NBA tickets and mobile technology are about to form an even closer relationship, thanks to the folks at Qualcomm and the entrepreneurial genius of Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban.
Cuban and Qualcomm are delivering an augmented reality experience to this year’s NBA playoff tickets for the Dallas Mavs.
Beginning tomorrow, April 2nd, tickets will go on sale for the first two Mavericks home games of the first round of the 2011 NBA Playoffs.
According to Qualcomm, fans will notice that there’s something dramatically different about these NBA playoff tickets. If you’ve downloaded the “Mavs AR” app from the Android marketplace, simply point your Android phone at the front of the special commemorative 2011 Mavs Playoff ticket.
What happens next? You’ll embark upon an interactive, augmented reality mobile gaming experience featuring some of the biggest names on the Mavs roster, like stars Dirk Nowitzki, Jason Kidd and Jason Terry.
For Cuban, the foray into augmented reality for NBA tickets represents what may very well just be the beginning of his ballclub’s widening embrace of mobile technologies in the NBA fan experience.
For more info on the Dallas Mavs’ AR playoff tickets, click here.
Quick stats on mobile smartphone usage
Smartphone ownership in the United States is surging. That’s according to fresh data published today from the comScore MobiLens service.
The report points to key trends in the US mobile phone industry during the three month average period ending February 2011.
For the three month average period ending in February, 234 million Americans ages 13 and older used mobile devices.
Based on comScore’s survey of more than 30,000 US mobile subscribers, estimates now place US smartphone ownership at 69.5 million, a substantial 13% spike from the preceding three-month period.
In the race for smartphone supremacy, Google’s Android grew 7.0 percentage points since November, strengthening its #1 position with 33.0 percent market share.
RIM, meanwhile, finished second with 28.9 percent market share. Apple placed third (25.2 percent), Microsoft fourth (7.7 percent), and Palm (2.8 percent) rounded out the top five.
With regard to mobile content usage, 68.8 percent of US mobile subscribers used text messaging on their mobile device in February 2011. Browsers were used by 38.4 percent of subscribers (up 3.1 percentage points), and downloaded mobile apps were used by 36.6 percent of the mobile audience (up 3.2 percentage points).
Similar noteworthy spikes were observed in the usage of social networking and mobile gaming.
Accessing of social networking sites or blogs increased 3.3 percentage points, representing 26.8 percent of mobile subscribers. Playing games represented 24.6 percent of the mobile audience, while listening to music represented 17.5 percent.
Healtcare Industry Rapdily Adopting Tablets
Why this matters: doctors have to access various information types in the course of the day, but when it comes to talking to patients, the visual nature of tablets is helps them to better understand their situation, disease, treatment and procedures.
An increasingly large segment of the medical community is turning to tablet computers. According to a freshly published study from Knowledge Networks for the pharmaceutical industry, a substantial 27% of primary care providers now own a tablet like Apple’s hugely popular iPad. That’s about 5 times the level in the general population.
The study’s results are based on the findings of a survey targeting some 5,490 doctors. Not surprisingly, an even larger percentage of doctors report owning a smartphone (64%). So what are these medical professionals doing with these devices? They’ve delving into cutting edge medical apps.
About three-quarters of specialists and PCPs view Epocrates, which appears to be the most widely used app of this sort. In general, 40 percent of pediatricians use drug reference apps, compared with 30 percent among specialists. But only 6 percent of specialists and PCPs use apps from drugmakers.
“Mobile technology has indeed proven a boon to busy physicians, helping them keep up on the latest information and manage their practices,” said Jim Vielee, Senior Vice President in charge of Physicians Consulting Network (PCN).
“Their focus on the practical – and slow adoption of branded pharma apps and mobile e-detailing – is something marketers need to keep in mind to make their efforts balanced and effective. Our findings also reinforce the important role that sales rep visits still play in doctor interaction; the transition to digital is still just that, and ignoring either side of the equation is likely to backfire,” Vielee adds.
From the Boston Globe:
Dr. Henry Feldman comes up close to the bed, taps on his iPad a few times, and tilts the panel toward his patient, Courtney Williams. On the screen are small pictures of something raw-looking and pink: the inside of Williams’s stomach, up close and magnified.
The previous day, Williams, a 27-year-old refrigeration technician, had walked into Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center weak and dizzy, suffering from excruciating abdominal pain. He had a bleeding ulcer, so severe that he lost almost half his blood.
“That’s your actual ulcer right there,’’ Feldman shows him on a picture, “the thing that sort of looks like a volcano, and what’s underneath that is a blood vessel.’’
He taps on the screen again, and a picture from Frank Netter’s “Atlas of Human Anatomy’’ comes up, showing the stomach and the blood vessels that feed it. He points out exactly where Williams’s ulcer is — “a bunch’’ of ulcers, actually.
Another few taps and Williams’s medical record pops up, so they can discuss discharge instructions. Williams eagerly takes in the information. He’s been through hell, he said, and it’s very important to him to stay healthy now.
Last month, at the launch of the iPad 2, Apple showed a video in which Dr. John Halamka, chief information officer at Beth Israel Deaconess, said the iPad “will change the way doctors practice medicine.’’
It was a bold statement, and not the first lofty claim made about technology. But this much is clear: Hospitals across the United States and as far as Israel and Australia are embracing iPads.
The reason is simple, Halamka said in a phone interview — iPads are a great fit for doctors.
“The secret for the ideal clinical device,’’ he said, “is it has to weigh a pound, it has to last 10 hours, because that’s their shift, you have to be able to disinfect it so there’s no risk of contamination, and you have to be able to drop it 5 feet onto carpet without damage.’’
Technically, iPads weigh about 1.3 pounds, and the wipe-downs they get constantly at Beth Israel Deaconess are strictly against Apple’s directions.
But what makes iPads ideal, doctors at Beth Israel Deaconess said, is that they combine mobility — the ability to do substantive work at the bedside, in a stairwell, anywhere — with interactive touchscreens they can use to share pictures and data with patients.
Other devices available at the hospital — computers on wheels, static workstations, laptops, tablet computers — fall short in critical ways, said Feldman and Dr. Larry Nathanson, an emergency physician and fellow iPad evangelist. Size, weight, and battery life get in the way, they said, and nothing can be flipped around and used at the bedside like an iPad.
As soon as the iPad went on sale, the doctors got them and have been using them since, though in rather different ways.
Nathanson, in the emergency department, keeps the patient tracking system on his screen at all times, so he can keep informed without the constant interruptions of pages to update him. He enters orders and pages colleagues, and pulls up websites for patients on the fly.
Feldman, a hospitalist, has armed himself with educational resources. He used to hand-draw pictures for patients to explain, say, the digestive system; now he uses Netter’s “Atlas,’’ and flips back to X-rays, lab results, etc. to connect the pieces and answer questions.
“The number of times I’ve had patients say to me, ‘That is the first time I have understood my disease’ — I can’t even count,’’ he said. Sometime soon, he believes, “it will become the standard of care to show people this kind of stuff off a device.’’
Yet even at Beth Israel Deaconess, which Feldman said is optimized for mobile devices, with a robust network and Web-based patient records, iPad users are still a minority.
Almost all the iPads are owned by individual physicians, although for a study led by Nathanson, the emergency department bought four iPads to be shared by 15 doctors. More units may be bought for residents, and the hospital has licensed educational content ideal for iPad users, Halamka said.
At Children’s Hospital Boston, chief information officer Dr. Daniel Nigrin said there is already “substantial use’’ of iPads by individual doctors, but the hospital is only beginning to look at ways to use them more extensively in clinical settings.
Children’s has done more with iPads in research, most notably by Howard Shane, director of the hospital’s Center for Communication Enhancement, who advocates the use of iPads to enrich the lives of children with autism as well as other disorders, according to the hospital’s website.
Shane’s research has shown that autistic children are often drawn to touchscreen devices, and the same Apple video that featured Halamka also touted the iPad’s life-changing impact for some children. Shane and his team advise parents on how to use iPads, and they are evaluating existing applications and creating new ones to engage children and help them learn language, according to the website.
At Boston Medical Center, where several doctors already own iPads, network security upgrades had to be made first, but the hospital is launching a pilot study this week with about 20 clinicians, said Meg Aranow, vice president and chief information officer.
“My expectation is that it’s going to go very well,’’ she said, “and we’ll be rolling out more broadly.’’
American Medical Association Launches First Official App for Physicians
The American Medical Association (AMA) has lifted the curtain on its first official medical application (called CPT E/M QuickRef) designed specifically for physicians. The app in question, which is now available for free through the iTunes store, enables doctors to quickly find CPT (Current Procedural Terminology) billing codes.
Compatible with Apple iPhone, iPod Touch and the iPad, the app features both decision-tree logic and quick search options, allowing physicians to digitally track CPT codes and email them anywhere. Physicians can also save their most frequently used codes by location or type of service to allow for even more ease of use. “The AMA’s new CPT quick reference app helps physicians determine the appropriate E&M code for billing quickly, easily and accurately,” said AMA Board Secretary Steven J. Stack, M.D. Simultaneously, the AMA also launched the 2011 AMA App Challenge to find “the next great medical app idea.”
“To find the next great medical app idea we are going right to the source by inviting physicians, residents and medical students to participate in the first-ever AMA App Challenge.” Open to all US physicians, residents and medical students, the 2011 AMA App Challenge calls on those on the front lines of medicine to submit their unique app idea for a chance to have the AMA bring it to life.
According to the official rules of the contest, participants can submit their app ideas through an online form. Submissions will be accepted through June 30th, 2011. Two winners will be selected, one from the resident/fellow or medical student category and one from the physician category. The winners will each receive $2,500 in cash and prizes, plus a trip for two to New Orleans for the grand unveiling of their winning idea at the AMA’s meeting in November
mHealth News Roundup
Harvard, Boston Children’s open $5,000 app challenge to free EHR data
Researchers at Children’s Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School this week opened a previously announced competition to develop “iPhone-like” applications to help unlock data stored in electronic health records. While the focus is on Web apps, the federally funded contest is encouraging submissions for mobile tablets, with a promise of “further optimization for smaller screens” such as smartphones by summer. Children’s and Harvard will award $5,000 for the best application in June and release the winning product in a health IT “app store,” the organizations say.
Read more here
Apple’s iPad 2 May Promote Further Mobile Health Advancements
The burgeoning use of contemporary computing technologies in healthcare may increase exponentially with tomorrow’s release of Apple’s iPad 2. According to a new report from InformationWeek, “if the launch of Apple’s iPad 2 is any indication of what’s in store for mobile health, then 2011 promises to be a year of tremendous strides in the development of mobile devices and software applications used in healthcare.”
Read more here
The Coming Medical Tablet War
Last year, in MobiHealthNews’ first report on tablets in the healthcare space, iPad vs. the Tablets in Healthcare, we took a close look at Apple’s iPad, which had only just hit store shelves, but had already made a name for itself in healthcare. Seemingly from the get-go physicians began to realize the device’s potential to redefine their workflow. As we wrote in last year’s report, “Apple’s device holds the potential to be a game changer in the healthcare space in the same manner that it has transformed the market for consumer devices.”
Furthermore, CTIA Vice President Rob Mesirow has hinted that a new Android tablet will be announced at the annual wireless trade show. And though he wouldn’t go into any detail as to who’s making it or what the specs are, Mesirow did go on to talk about how tablets in general are changing Heath care thanks to what he calls “M-health” and that M-health news at CTIA this year. And as if hinting to one spec, Mesirow went on to state that a 7″ tablet fits rather nicely in a lab coat.
Read more here
Dermatologists want payment for telehealth
No word yet on the outcome of last week’s meeting between the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the American Academy of Dermatology Association, American Telemedicine Association. But both of the latter two groups are pushing hard for CMS to add payment categories for dermatology consults provided via telehealth. They’ve already sent an official letter to CMS asking to have “teledermatology” included under the definition of “physician services,” in the Medicare Policy Benefit Manual, which guides what services Medicare will pay for. Their argument: Telemedicine technologies provide a high enough image resolution to allow detailed, assessment of skin conditions.
Read more here
Harvard students to launch mHealth, Health 2.0 incubator Rock Health
Four Harvard Business School students are launching a San Francisco-based mobile health and Health 2.0 incubator, Rock Health, that aims to provide healthcare expertise, development resources and eventually funding to winning ideas. The core team at Rock Health includes Medical Director Nate Gross (who is also involved with the soon-to-launch Doximity), Interim CFO Dan Monahan, Creative Director Leslie Ziegler and Managing Director Halle Tecco.
Read more here
Walgreens: 1M subscribe to prescription text alerts
After just four months of launching “Refill by Scan,” Walgreens have found that users of its smartphone application have embraced the feature which enables them to use the camera on their phone to scan the barcode printed on a prescription label to order a refill. Walgreens said half of all refill orders originating from a mobile device are now from Refill by Scan. The feature has been available to users of Walgreens’ iPhone and Android apps since November 2010.
Read more here
HP launches new telehealth push
After Hewlett-Packard bought Palm and it’s WebOS, for $1 billion last year, we knew the company was serious about mobile health. This year, HP is following up with a cadre of four new mHealth product partnerships–which it debuted at HIMSS11 in Orlando last week–plus some new hardware for mobile applications. It doesn’t exactly catch HP up to the blazing fast development going on at Apple or Google, but may signal growing momentum.
Read more here
New app will give docs access to records ‘anytime, anywhere’
Doctors soon will be able to look at medical records whenever and wherever they need to–and email or video chat with other doctors about those records–thanks to a mobile application created by Southern California-based innovation leader Palomar Pomerado Health being unveiled this week at HIMSS11 in Orlando. The app, known as Medical Information Anytime Anywhere (MIAA), gives docs the ability to view records from any number of providers without having to worry about the compatibility of different software systems used, reports the San Diego Union-Tribune. MIAA breaks down records into a common format, according to the newspaper.
Read more here
AT&T Announces New Initiatives for the Healthcare Industry
Continuing its momentum to help the healthcare industry improve patient care and reduce medical costs, AT&T* today announced two new patient care technology pilots, and new enhancements to the services delivered by AT&T ForHealthSM, AT&T’s healthcare practice area. The company also said it has been accredited to provide specialized information security consulting services to help healthcare customers streamline their security and compliance processes.
Read more here
Pharma companies investing in mobile phone apps for tracking diabetes
from Diabetes.co.uk Wed, 16 Feb 2011
Pharma giants Merck and Novartis have increased their investment in mobile phone applications and educational websites, it has emerged.
A report by consultancy Ernst and Young revealed that the two companies have spent 78 per cent more on apps in an attempt to convince patients they should take their drug treatments, as well as eating properly and taking exercise .
It was also found that pharmaceutical firms started 97 different projects for using information technology to benefit patient health in 2010, as compared to the 124 projects that had been initiated in the four years before that. It was shown that around 41 per cent of these projects were for applications on smartphones, which was a rise of 11 per cent from 2006. Drug manufacturers are now taking more responsibility for ensuring patients are successfully taking their treatments, especially with increased pressure to prove that their drugs are value for money. Among the applications developed for the iPhone are an app for learning about diabetes and the tracking of levels of blood glucose, nutrition, and activity, one that provides the opportunity to maintain a record of your vaccinations, and a German language map that allows you to pinpoint locations of diabetes specialists.
