With the United States now declared Ebola free as of this writing, the media hype surrounding Ebola in the U.S. has simmered down a touch.

According to no shortage of healthcare experts, a potential Ebola outbreak was stopped in its tracks thanks, at least to some degree, by a text-messaging program originally intended for patients with diabetes.

Although texting alone didn’t stop Ebola from becoming a domestic pandemic, Davy James of Pharmacy Times noted that the only Ebola case in Senegal was confirmed in August and from there a massive public awareness campaign began when the World Organization and Senegal’s Ministry of Health sent out 4 million SMS warning the public regarding the dangers of Ebola and how to prevent its spread.

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One of the most searched for health related applications on iOS or Android today is that which would help suffers of ankle sprains deal with or recover from their injury.

But practical apps that could do any legitimate good for ankle sprain patients are almost entirely lacking altogether. Why? Because there are, indeed, some limits to mobile health technology.

“The biggest misconception about mHealth,” says Jessica Reins, a healthcare worker based in Chicago, “is that there’s an app for everything. And that’s not true. Sometimes, you have to see a specialist.”
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In an effort to deliver a convenient way to pay for patients and a mechanism to ensure adequate payment at the time of services provided, healthcare facilities and medical practices across the country are moving beyond credit cards and checks to invest in mobile payment technologies.

Earlier this spring, Wellero stepped up to the plate with a new offering that makes paying your doctor, lab, hospital or clinic easier than ever via a smartphone app that links patients and providers.

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While many healthcare professionals are still on the fence when it comes to mobile apps that patients can use to track and monitor various aspects of their health and well-being, everyday Americans are turning to mobile apps at a rapid rate. This leads many to believe that healthcare professionals may need to embrace mHealth in order to stay competitive in today’s tech savvy world.

At current date, 70% of Americans currently use some type of mobile app to manage and monitor their health and well-being. On top of that, 63% are interested in mHealth apps with more advanced reporting, tracking, and healthcare related features.

Currently the most popular mHealth apps are those that track daily caloric intake, weight, and physical activity. 53% of individuals who utilize mHealth apps to monitor their caloric intake found that they consume more calories on a daily basis than they had estimated, and another 23% found that they are less physically active than they had estimated.

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Accelrys, Inc., a provider of lifecycle management software and related solutions, has launched two new mobile applications supporting key life sciences workflows and real-time collaboration spanning both the ScienceCloud workspace and on-premises systems.

“ScienceCloud is a secure, SaaS-based, mobile-enabled information management and collaboration environment that improves data and knowledge sharing for globally networked researchers,” the company tells mHealthWatch in a written statement.
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The worldwide adoption of mobile health devices, solutions, and resources has been well documented across the global healthcare spectrum. According to the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics, apps in particular have become ubiquitous in many aspects of our lives over the past five years, fueled by the widespread availability of tablet computers and smartphones.

Tens of thousands of health, wellness, and medical apps are now available for download to Apple or Android devices from online stores, IMS says, while cautiously noting that mHealth has not grown in all markets at the same accelerated pace observed elsewhere.

In recent years, for example, the United Arab Emirates has been slow to embrace the potential of mHealth. But this former-laggard has begun slowly warming to mobile health and could soon be classied as one of the world’s hottest emerging markets for mHealth.

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