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Hardly a day goes by anymore without an announcement of a new mobile health app, but there are precious few data to show which apps are useful in clinical or financial terms. Lots of people would like to change that, but how?
Three experts offered ideas in a recent opinion article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, and some partnerships between academia and industry may be laying the groundwork for greater validation of new mobile health (mHealth) tools.
Of the more than 40,000 health, fitness, and medical apps on the market, reviews "have largely focused on personal impressions, rather than evidence-based, unbiased assessments of clinical performance and data security," Adam C. Powell, Ph.D., Dr. Adam B. Landman, and Dr. David W. Bates wrote in their article, "In Search of a Few Good Apps" (JAMA 2014;311:1851-2).
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) could play a greater role supporting development of mHealth app guidelines and, eventually, commission non-profit or for-profit entities to certify apps, as it does now for electronic health records, they suggested.
Dr. Powell is a Boston-based consultant. Dr. Landman, an emergency medicine specialist, is chief medical information officer for health information innovation and integration at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston. Dr. Bates is chief of general internal medicine and the chief quality officer at Brigham and Women’s. Dr. Landman and Dr. Bates are both at Harvard Medical School in Boston.
The National Institutes of Health mHealth Training Institute is educating an interdisciplinary group of researchers about the potential of mHealth and the need to evaluate these new tools. "If this effort is coupled with increased funding for mHealth research, it may help galvanize a larger body of evidence to inform mHealth app development and certification," the authors wrote.
Meanwhile, a new partnership between the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and Samsung Electronics aims to validate and commercialize promising digital tools for health care, including apps, in a Digital Health Innovation Lab. A few other universities recently entered into similar partnerships with industry.
Both UCSF and Samsung are making a "significant investment" to fund the lab but are not ready to release financial details, Dr. Michael Blum said in an interview.
The partnership initially will focus on preventive health, said Dr. Blum, who will direct the lab to be located at UCSF’s Mission Bay campus. "There is no better way to treat disease than by avoiding it in the first place. [Moe than] 70% of our health care dollars are spent on avoidable disease," said Dr. Blum, a cardiologist who has been leading UCSF’s relatively new Center for Digital Health Innovation.
UCSF already has begun testing medical apps in clinical trials, such as a smoking cessation app, and will pursue clinical testing of tools including health sensors, wearable computing, and cloud-based analytics.
"There are many sites designing medical apps but very few are rigorously validated," Dr. Blum said. "We believe that validation is critical to the success of these apps and products. It is important for health care providers to know that they can trust the data and information which will lead to more consistent use and, hopefully, better outcomes for the users."
In Michigan, the William Davidson Foundation in January 2014 awarded $3 million to the Henry Ford Health System to create the William Davidson Center for Entrepreneurs in Digital Health. The center hopes to attract corporate partners and others to create, clinically validate, and commercialize digital health tools and to create a curriculum integrating health care, digital technologies, and entrepreneurship, according to a statement released by the Henry Ford Innovation Institute.
At the University of Colorado, Denver, the Center for Information Technology Innovation recently launched a Digital Health Consortium to bring its business school faculty together with entrepreneurs, health care providers, researchers, educators, and others to develop and clinically validate the next generation of digital health tools. The Center is funded by its members, which include the university and more than 30 Colorado information technology business leaders.
As each of these initiatives and others like them report results from their validation efforts, we’ll bring you the latest news on medical apps. Watch this space.
On Twitter @sherryboschert
Hardly a day goes by anymore without an announcement of a new mobile health app, but there are precious few data to show which apps are useful in clinical or financial terms. Lots of people would like to change that, but how?
Three experts offered ideas in a recent opinion article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, and some partnerships between academia and industry may be laying the groundwork for greater validation of new mobile health (mHealth) tools.
Of the more than 40,000 health, fitness, and medical apps on the market, reviews "have largely focused on personal impressions, rather than evidence-based, unbiased assessments of clinical performance and data security," Adam C. Powell, Ph.D., Dr. Adam B. Landman, and Dr. David W. Bates wrote in their article, "In Search of a Few Good Apps" (JAMA 2014;311:1851-2).
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) could play a greater role supporting development of mHealth app guidelines and, eventually, commission non-profit or for-profit entities to certify apps, as it does now for electronic health records, they suggested.
Dr. Powell is a Boston-based consultant. Dr. Landman, an emergency medicine specialist, is chief medical information officer for health information innovation and integration at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston. Dr. Bates is chief of general internal medicine and the chief quality officer at Brigham and Women’s. Dr. Landman and Dr. Bates are both at Harvard Medical School in Boston.
The National Institutes of Health mHealth Training Institute is educating an interdisciplinary group of researchers about the potential of mHealth and the need to evaluate these new tools. "If this effort is coupled with increased funding for mHealth research, it may help galvanize a larger body of evidence to inform mHealth app development and certification," the authors wrote.
Meanwhile, a new partnership between the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and Samsung Electronics aims to validate and commercialize promising digital tools for health care, including apps, in a Digital Health Innovation Lab. A few other universities recently entered into similar partnerships with industry.
Both UCSF and Samsung are making a "significant investment" to fund the lab but are not ready to release financial details, Dr. Michael Blum said in an interview.
The partnership initially will focus on preventive health, said Dr. Blum, who will direct the lab to be located at UCSF’s Mission Bay campus. "There is no better way to treat disease than by avoiding it in the first place. [Moe than] 70% of our health care dollars are spent on avoidable disease," said Dr. Blum, a cardiologist who has been leading UCSF’s relatively new Center for Digital Health Innovation.
UCSF already has begun testing medical apps in clinical trials, such as a smoking cessation app, and will pursue clinical testing of tools including health sensors, wearable computing, and cloud-based analytics.
"There are many sites designing medical apps but very few are rigorously validated," Dr. Blum said. "We believe that validation is critical to the success of these apps and products. It is important for health care providers to know that they can trust the data and information which will lead to more consistent use and, hopefully, better outcomes for the users."
In Michigan, the William Davidson Foundation in January 2014 awarded $3 million to the Henry Ford Health System to create the William Davidson Center for Entrepreneurs in Digital Health. The center hopes to attract corporate partners and others to create, clinically validate, and commercialize digital health tools and to create a curriculum integrating health care, digital technologies, and entrepreneurship, according to a statement released by the Henry Ford Innovation Institute.
At the University of Colorado, Denver, the Center for Information Technology Innovation recently launched a Digital Health Consortium to bring its business school faculty together with entrepreneurs, health care providers, researchers, educators, and others to develop and clinically validate the next generation of digital health tools. The Center is funded by its members, which include the university and more than 30 Colorado information technology business leaders.
As each of these initiatives and others like them report results from their validation efforts, we’ll bring you the latest news on medical apps. Watch this space.
On Twitter @sherryboschert
Hardly a day goes by anymore without an announcement of a new mobile health app, but there are precious few data to show which apps are useful in clinical or financial terms. Lots of people would like to change that, but how?
Three experts offered ideas in a recent opinion article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, and some partnerships between academia and industry may be laying the groundwork for greater validation of new mobile health (mHealth) tools.
Of the more than 40,000 health, fitness, and medical apps on the market, reviews "have largely focused on personal impressions, rather than evidence-based, unbiased assessments of clinical performance and data security," Adam C. Powell, Ph.D., Dr. Adam B. Landman, and Dr. David W. Bates wrote in their article, "In Search of a Few Good Apps" (JAMA 2014;311:1851-2).
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) could play a greater role supporting development of mHealth app guidelines and, eventually, commission non-profit or for-profit entities to certify apps, as it does now for electronic health records, they suggested.
Dr. Powell is a Boston-based consultant. Dr. Landman, an emergency medicine specialist, is chief medical information officer for health information innovation and integration at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston. Dr. Bates is chief of general internal medicine and the chief quality officer at Brigham and Women’s. Dr. Landman and Dr. Bates are both at Harvard Medical School in Boston.
The National Institutes of Health mHealth Training Institute is educating an interdisciplinary group of researchers about the potential of mHealth and the need to evaluate these new tools. "If this effort is coupled with increased funding for mHealth research, it may help galvanize a larger body of evidence to inform mHealth app development and certification," the authors wrote.
Meanwhile, a new partnership between the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and Samsung Electronics aims to validate and commercialize promising digital tools for health care, including apps, in a Digital Health Innovation Lab. A few other universities recently entered into similar partnerships with industry.
Both UCSF and Samsung are making a "significant investment" to fund the lab but are not ready to release financial details, Dr. Michael Blum said in an interview.
The partnership initially will focus on preventive health, said Dr. Blum, who will direct the lab to be located at UCSF’s Mission Bay campus. "There is no better way to treat disease than by avoiding it in the first place. [Moe than] 70% of our health care dollars are spent on avoidable disease," said Dr. Blum, a cardiologist who has been leading UCSF’s relatively new Center for Digital Health Innovation.
UCSF already has begun testing medical apps in clinical trials, such as a smoking cessation app, and will pursue clinical testing of tools including health sensors, wearable computing, and cloud-based analytics.
"There are many sites designing medical apps but very few are rigorously validated," Dr. Blum said. "We believe that validation is critical to the success of these apps and products. It is important for health care providers to know that they can trust the data and information which will lead to more consistent use and, hopefully, better outcomes for the users."
In Michigan, the William Davidson Foundation in January 2014 awarded $3 million to the Henry Ford Health System to create the William Davidson Center for Entrepreneurs in Digital Health. The center hopes to attract corporate partners and others to create, clinically validate, and commercialize digital health tools and to create a curriculum integrating health care, digital technologies, and entrepreneurship, according to a statement released by the Henry Ford Innovation Institute.
At the University of Colorado, Denver, the Center for Information Technology Innovation recently launched a Digital Health Consortium to bring its business school faculty together with entrepreneurs, health care providers, researchers, educators, and others to develop and clinically validate the next generation of digital health tools. The Center is funded by its members, which include the university and more than 30 Colorado information technology business leaders.
As each of these initiatives and others like them report results from their validation efforts, we’ll bring you the latest news on medical apps. Watch this space.
On Twitter @sherryboschert
