Mobile services designer Mark Curtis says mobile is reshaping health care as we know it.

“In the not-too-distant future,” Curtis asserts in a new CNN editorial, “you’ll receive a full diagnosis and cure from your smartphone before you have even realized you’re unwell.”

According to Curtis, who serves as chief client officer at design consultancy Fjord, digital is set to embark on a path of “radical transformation” in the health and wellness sector.

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We came across this nice little infographic this morning that shows the future of mobile healthcare broken down by present and future trends, along with current adoption rates.

We cover the growth of the industry all the time, but it’s still fascinating just how quickly adoption continues.  Consider this; 62% of physicians are now using tablets, with over half of them using it at the point-of-care, and even 71% of nurses are now using smartphones at work.  There’s more than 40,000 medical apps now available for tablets and smartphones, and more than 247M people have downloaded a health app.

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We wanted to give you the heads up that mHealthWatch will be on the ground in Washington D.C. next week to bring you on-site coverage of the annual mHealth Summit.

Building on last year’s massive success, this year’s event promises to be even bigger – highlighting emerging best practices from mHealth implementations as well as the latest business, finance, policy and technical perspectives from throughout the healthcare industry.  This year’s summit will be the go-to event for everything mobile healthcare, including more than 400 exhibitors showcasing innovative devices, services, applications, tools and related solutions.  Organizers are expecting more than 4,500 healthcare leaders from nearly 50 different countries around the world.

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Contests to help spur innovation in the mHealth application market is nothing new — we’ve seen countless apps emerge from such events around the world as the mobile healthcare industry continues to gain incredible momentum.

The latest event to produce such innovation took place just before the Health 2.0 Europe Conference in Berlin, in which Aetna sponsored a code-a-thon with EUR 10K worth of prizes.  Aetna invited the best developers, designers, health experts and health tech entrepreneurs to compete on the challenge of developing “innovative mobile apps to promote health and wellness across the globe.”

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Mr. Bertolini was introduced as a man who intimately understands challenges in health and healthcare.  Mark’s son was diagnosed with cancer in the past few years, and recently he gave his son one of his kidneys for his survival.  The audience clapped when we were told that his son is doing well and has since recovered.

Mark explained to us all that the world is evolving, and behavioral changes need to happen in this country. He went on to expound, “imagine a healthcare system that is connected and convenient, and that works around the members’ lives instead of members working around the healthcare system.”

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One of the most enjoyable interviews of the Health 2.0 Conference in San Francisco this week was that of Michael Long, Chairman and CEO of Lumeris.  He was interviewed by Jane Sarasohn-Kahn of iHealthBeat. Michael is also the CEO of Essence Group Holding Company, and many will also recognize his name as the former CEO of Healtheon Corporation (now WebMD).

Mr. Long is not a new kid on the block.  He has extensive experience and expertise both in business management in general and in the health space in particular.  He started Lumeris to address several on-going challenges in healthcare:  to lower costs; improve quality; improve patient experiences within the health ecosystem; and also to improve the physician experience as well.  They initially targeted 40,000 seniors to prove their model.  So what do they do exactly?

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Walgreens is continuing its aggressive mHealth push by launching yet another pilot program to allow customers to schedule appointment to its clinics directly from their smartphones.

The pilot program was launched at clinics in Denver and Chicago as a start, and to use the new scheduling service patients must first download the free iTriage app for iPhones and Android devices.  The partnership with iTriage is key, as it signifies how important this app has become in the mHealth space.  In its first three years since launch, for example, iTriage has seen more than 6 million downloads.

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