5 reasons why hospital mHealth apps are a win for patients and doctors
There are currently more than 260,000 mHealth apps on the market, according to data from Research2guidance. Whereas this may be exciting news, the sheer number may also be overwhelming for patients and doctors. How can you know what is useful and what is not? One way hospitals are solving the app reliability challenge is by building in-house innovation incubators.
To get to know how that works, listen to a conversation with Ashish Atreja, the CTO of Sinai AppLab at Mount Sinai, in the fourth episode of Medicine Today on the Digital Health podcast.
He are 5 reasons why in-house innovation incubators are good news.
1. Accelerating change
Innovation arms in hospitals are exciting because they help introduce novelties into the rigid healthcare systems.
2. Providing reliability
New solutions are designed by high profile specialists in hospitals. Consequently, solutions are tested inside the hospitals and perfected before they are put on the market.
“I would never give or prescribe medicine to any of my patients that has not been approved in some formal capacity. Why should I prescribe an app?” says gastroenterologist Ashish Atreja, MD, MPH. If you’re a startup, he might take a look at your solution. Why?
One of his jobs as the CTO of Sinai AppLab is onboarding new technologies built by startups outside Mount Sinai. After all, he emphasizes, “it’s impossible for one incubator to do and know everything.”
3. Ease of recommendation
It is easier for doctors to recommend in-house solutions, because they have better access and understanding of the innovation process and reliability of an app compared to the flood of other mhealth digital health offerings on the market.
As Ashish Atreja explains, Mount Sinai even build a platform which allows physicians to prescribe evidence based apps. “We curate the best apps based on the evidence, security and safety. There’s a whole team of people rating the best apps, looking at the published evidence and bringing them to the market place.”
4. Financial benefit
Innovation arms generate new revenue streams for hospitals.
5. Encouraging innovation
When a support environment for creativity is in place, doctors who want to innovate can test and develop their ideas. They also get all the entrepreneurial support in scaling and improving their ideas, so they can reach patients faster.
In 2012, Cleveland Clinic experts designed the Medical Innovation Playbook – a detailed report on the diverse and rapidly evolving technology commercialisation programs of the USA’s top medical centres. It includes an overview of nearly 10,000 invention disclosures, 6,400 patent applications and almost 2,000 issued patents.
