There’s almost not a day that goes by where there’s not some new mobile application in the news. My question is, what is going to end up being a standard and in fact useful without more glut.  I said a while back that mobile meaningful use was overlooked and here we are.  I look at some of this as a consumer would and for example the application that was touted to help pregnant women with reminders imageis one I will give my opinion on here.  If I were a pregnant woman, and being the tech person I am, I would maybe try it out for a day or two and then delete it as I have so much other stuff going on and at that point it is another item that takes my valuable time during the day when I need to focus on my work and other things.

To be fair someone who is a novice and does little else with their cell phone might see some value but then again when the novelty wears off and this is just something else to deal with, they may grow tired of it too, so value is in the eye of the beholder.  This is what all the developers are trying to figure out too as well as the companies who make them.

We have so many healthcare apps out there now – WHEN ARE APPS AGGREGATORS GOING TO GET INTO MOTION?   This TED video below makes this point very well. about the glut of monitoring devices out there today. 

Target Corporation Partners with Red Brick Wellness Program

Now insurance carriers are different, they want data for their risk management evaluations and will connive, market, create little tiny studies and put out press releases to get consumers on board, and granted devices are not all that bad but each one has their own focus so when you get to the consumer level with several companies pulling and tugging, along with trying to offer discounts like companies as Target does with cheaper premiums, you have a mess and the consumer says “I’m out of here” and goes home to play World of Warcraft. 

What’s On the Agenda Tonight–World of Warcraft or Work on My Personal Health Record

These folks over at HHS I don’t are getting this disruption and we stuff like this in the news, so why don’t all of them and Congress tie themselves up with some devices and experience the joy here.

HHS To Conduct Study on Patient Perception on Health IT – Got A Better Idea Why Don’t They Become E-patients Role Models, and Participants – Make IT Personal and Believableimage

Don’t misunderstand, I like technology and what it does and in this blog I suggest potential solutions but I’m also smart enough to see this marketing craze and what it does to the average consumer.  HHS needs some first hand experience at this and they might see what is being pushed, marketed and shoved down consumer’s throats at times as everyone is competing so ferociously.  This picture to the right is an accelerometer that is in all these devices, pretty small so it goes everywhere at less than a buck for each unit sensor.

If the nonparticipants are bliss and don’t give some of this a try first hand, they don’t get it and we have more “Magpie Healthcare” on the rise. 

Stick a Fitbit on these folks and see how long it is before it either disrupts or how soon the novelty wears off, and even more interesting to know is how many members of Congress and HHS would choose to sleep with one, as the product says you can do this and get a full report.  image

Would our President sleep with a Fitbit on?  I ask that in pursing the big question once more is this something for everybody or is it that old paradigm of “its for those guys over there”.  BD

What is useful and what is useless is in the eye of the beholder and and devices that are made to help us will go down the toilet soon with current marketing trends and no first hand participating of our leaders to get a clue.  We tired of these things and it’s work to look at data.  The average consumer doesn’t want all the detailed data, or after a week of it, is bored and tired of it. 

You have to live life too. In case you haven’t figured this out, the beholder is the patient, the one folks always seem to leave out of their marketing equations in the hot pursuit of the all the data with the latest and greatest algorithm to hit the scene. 

At TED@Cannes, Gary Wolf gives a 5-min intro to an intriguing new pastime: using mobile apps and always-on gadgets to track and analyze your body, mood, diet, spending -- just about everything in daily life you can measure -- in gloriously geeky detail.

Gary Wolf: The quantified self | Video on TED.com

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