ITU Workshop on
“ICT Innovations in Emerging Economies”
(Tunis, Tunisia, 28 January 2014)
Mobile Healthcare Services
In Developing Countries
Adel AMRI
COO Trustiser, Professor at Ecole
Centrale de Paris and ISEP
Tunis, Tunisia, 28 January 2014
Agenda
Motivations
Mobile Healthcare services
Mobile Healthcare services areas
Technology enablers for mobile
healthcare
Recommendations
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Motivations
One the triggers of the Arab uprising
revolutions:
Large disparities between geographical regions
on income, infrastructure and public services
Very large number of individuals don’t receive the
care they need in term of employment, healthcare
services, education
Healthcare is a big issue on rural regions (people with
low income and far from medical centers). Bad
weather conditions on winter and bad transport
infrastructure add tremendous hurdles for these
population to join these centers.
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Motivations
Public hospitals become very crowded with poor quality
services. High unemployment rate and low income
workers cannot afford private doctors services
Alarming increasing rate of cardiovascular, diabetes
diseases du to bad nutrition and poor diet. There is a big
lack of preventing the problems before they happen
Chronic long duration diseases cost a lot of money to the
healthcare system:
~75% of medical expenditures takes place in small number
of diseases (cardiovascular, diabetes, asthma and cancer)
There is a big lack of using mobile technologies to reduce
these huge costs.
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Mobile Healthcare
Mobile Healthcare is a big desert in the Arab
World!
Mobile Healthcare could:
Fix disparities between the regions by providing an
affordable access to healthcare services to low income
worker and jobless
Offer better prevention against chronic diseases through
educational information (guidance to smokers to stop
smocking, advices for better nutrition, calories counters,
monitoring of critical health indicators, etc)
Reduce the cost of chronic diseases through the use of
mobile systems to monitor patient symptoms and raise
alerts in the case of a problem
Remote monitoring reduce unnecessary visits to doctors
and could improve patient quality of life (visits to the
hospitals generate a lot of stress to them)
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Mobile Healthcare Services
Remote monitoring, testing and diagnosis:
Data collection
Disease surveillance
Diagnosis support
Mobile technology (smart phones connected to medical
sensors, mobile networks) become an information
transmission tool of patient medical data to centrally
located providers. These information is processed
automatically by specialized software programs which
raise alerts to doctors in case of abnormal data
Prevention management:
Pregnant woman control
Young infants control
Prevention against chronic diseases
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Mobile Healthcare Services
Two types of remote monitoring services:
Lightweight remote monitoring service:
Medical data gathered by local sensors connected to a
smart phone
Heavyweight remote monitoring service:
The monitoring is done through a trained intermediaries
and local facilitators and medical data sent through mobile
networks
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Mobile Healthcare Innovations
Explosion of mobile healthcare innovations:
More than 50 000 applications in Apple Store!
Mobile Apps features examples:
Management of chronic diseases
Calories counters
Prescription reminders, appointment notices, medical
references, etc
Track Alzheimer’s patient position (case the patient get
lost)
Explosion of medical wearable sensors and devises:
Example: Android smart watch connected heartbeats
sensors, etc
Explosion of mobile healthcare backend platforms:
Example:2net platform developed by Qualcomm, etc
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Mobile Healthcare Innovation
(Example)
An ECG (Electrocardiogram) in your pocket:
The AliveCor System is made up of a
smartphone-based Heart Monitor and the
AliveECG application coupled with optional
AliveCor Services that include professional ECG
analysis in as little as 30 minutes and a free
AliveCor account to connect doctors and
patients. (Ref: http://www.alivecor.com/)
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Technology Enablers for Mobile
Healthcare Services Expansion
Cloud Computing
4G and high speed networks
Big Data / Data Mining
Expert Systems
Social Networks
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Technology Enablers for Mobile Healthcare
Services Expansion
Mobile Cloud Computing
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Technology Enablers for Mobile Healthcare
Services Expansion
Mobile Backend As A Service
Backend as a Service: a model for providing web and mobile app
developers with a way to link their applications to hosted backend
cloud storage while also providing features such as user
management, push notifications, and integration with social
networking services, all as an integrated offering.
Key goal is to abstract away all the complexity related to cloud
and cloud management, and provide simple APIs that can be used
across all popular mobile platforms.
“Don’t worry about the server side, we’ll take care of it for you.”
This is a very popular area these days; 40+ startup companies in
this area have sprung up recently.
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Recommendations for Mobile
Healthcare Services
There are huge opportunities of mobile
healthcare in developing countries:
Public sector should build a strategic plan to deploy
mobile healthcare services:
Offer good quality healthcare services to disadvantaged
regions
Offer better patient experience and reduce crowded
hospitals
Big cost saving
Better prevention
Private sector could also have tremendous business
opportunities with mobile healthcare:
Private doctors could reach more patients with mobile
technology
New business models based on monthly subscription fees
for remote monitoring => recurrent revenues
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Mobile Healthcare Services
Opportunities to Operators
Mobile operators could play an important role by
moving from passive communication network
providers to an active partner
Mobile Money will be targeted at those without
bank accounts in rural regions or for jobless
Mobile Healthcare services are generic, mobile
operators could deploy the same solutions to
different countries
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