Mobile Health Strategies

A Successful Lesson Plan for School-Based Telehealth

March 09, 2016 by Eric Wicklund

A Texas-based health system is seeking strong success in a small school-based telehealth program by following one simple rule: “Don’t have a hammer and go searching for a nail.” In other words, says S. Luke Webster, MD, vice...

mHealth Shows its Maturity at HIMSS16

March 07, 2016 by Eric Wicklund

The 2016 HIMSS Conference and Exhibition may well be remembered for what didn’t happen than what did happen. After a week’s worth of keynotes, education sessions, crowded exhibit halls, cocktail parties and Elvis impersonators, it...

A Digital Health Platform Helps NICU Parents Face the Challenges

March 02, 2016 by Eric Wicklund

An innovative new mHealth program aims to help the stressed out parents of newborns in neonatal intensive care units. The program, a partnership between Costco and an mHealth startup called NeoCare Solutions, gives Costco employees who have children...

mHealth Put to Work on the Science of Sleep

March 02, 2016 by Eric Wicklund

IBM and Apple are bringing their mHealth platforms in to tackle a health issue that affects almost everyone: Getting a good night’s sleep. In a partnership announced late Tuesday at HIMSS16, IBM’s Watson Health and the American Sleep...

Putting mHealth to Work for Patient Engagement

March 01, 2016 by Eric Wicklund

A home-grown mHealth program at Seattle Children’s Hospital is proving just how useful digital tools can be for patients, their families and hospital staff. Traditionally, liver transplant patients and their family meet with hospital staff...

A Global mHealth Project Sets its Sights on America’s Underserved

February 24, 2016 by Eric Wicklund

A non-profit program that’s supplying mHealth technology and resources to Third World nations is now setting its sights on underserved parts of our own country. Health eVillages, launched in 2011 by the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice...

The Future of mHealth Wearables May Focus on Smartglasses

February 18, 2016 by Eric Wicklund

The intersection of mHealth and wearables most often focuses on the wrist, where fitness bands and smartwatches have ruled the roost. But what if we’re looking at the wrong place for the key to solving the consumer engagement puzzle? How...

Digital Health Translators Help Providers Get Past ‘Hello’

February 10, 2016 by Eric Wicklund

Healthcare providers are relying more and more on digital health tools to communicate with their patients.  That’s especially true when the patient doesn’t understand English. At Chicago’s Advocate Health Care, five of...

mHealth Platforms Are Proving Their Value to Home Health Agencies

February 08, 2016 by Eric Wicklund

A Chicago-based home health agency is launching an mHealth platform to help its chronic care patients transition from the hospital to the home – and stay home. Health Resource Solutions, which works with more than 1,000 patients a month,...

Hospital’s mHealth Project Finds Value in Fitbit Data

February 05, 2016 by Eric Wicklund

A Minnesota hospital is tapping into Fitbit to better understand how activity and sleep patterns affect its young diabetic patients. Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota is using the popular fitness wearable to study the habits...

Mississippi Scales Up Its Telehealth Network

February 03, 2016 by Eric Wicklund

The success of Mississippi’s telehealth-based diabetes program is prompting its parent health system to expand to other states – and other chronic disease groups. The Diabetes Telehealth Network, a statewide remote care management...

Watson Brings mHealth Into the Workplace

February 02, 2016 by Eric Wicklund

Watson’s capabilities in population-based mHealth programs are now being put to the test in the office. IBM’s supercomputer is joining forces with the American Heart Association and Welltok in two new programs, one to measure an employee’s...

UK Goes All In on Remote Patient Monitoring

January 25, 2016 by Eric Wicklund

The UK’s National Health Service is rolling out seven projects to test mHealth and telehealth technology in remote patient monitoring. Officials say the ground-breaking initiative will help millions of Britons live at home while having...

NewYork-Presbyterian’s New App is a Study in Simplicity

January 14, 2016 by Eric Wicklund

Roughly one week ago, NewYork-Presbyterian launched a new smartphone app for patients in the Apple App Store. Sometime next week, the New York City-based health system will be releasing its third iteration of the app. “We like to be nimble,”...

Making a Case for Pagers - and Smartphones - in Care Team Coordination

January 14, 2016 by Eric Wicklund

The death of the pager has been reported more than once in healthcare circles. Now an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association is bringing it back to life for a while. Written by University of California-San Francisco doctors...

Ride-Sharing Apps Target a Healthcare Pain Point

January 13, 2016 by Eric Wicklund

Healthcare providers are turning to the latest craze in transportation to make sure their patients make their medical appointments. The ride-sharing service Lyft announced this week that it’s working with the National Medtrans Network’s...

New Telehealth Services Cater to Mobile Employees

January 12, 2016 by Eric Wicklund

A Pennsylvania college's Social Enterprise Institute has launched a network of health and wellness centers for truckers. Graduate students of Elizabethtown College and the SEI, also based at the college, are converting nine mobile chapels...

Pharmacies Look to Telehealth Partnerships to Keep Clinics Running

January 11, 2016 by Eric Wicklund

An announcement out of Chicago today might signal a new trend in retail healthcare. Advocate Health Care, one of the Midwest’s largest health systems, has announced that it will take over 56 retail clinics in Walgreens locations in and...

Turning to Telehealth For a Good Night’s Sleep

January 04, 2016 by Eric Wicklund

The latest trend in telehealth? Using IT to catch some Zs. The advent of remote monitoring platforms has pushed sleep therapy out of the lab and into the bedroom, where specialists or even primary care providers can keep tabs on a patient’s...

Healthcare Providers Tap Into Social Media for Care Team Coordination

December 31, 2015 by Eric Wicklund

How’s this for clinical outcomes: A home healthcare facility struggling with a 40 percent readmission rate tests a social media-based communications platform for its care team members. During the three-month pilot this past spring, the...