Measure your pulsemake an appointment with the doctor, do an ultrasoundbe alerted for the time of its treatment, check your reimbursements… There are countless smartphone applications imagined by designers. These same designers who assure us that the health of the future will be digital. Even the doctors believe in it, they who admit surfing on google regularly to find out about pathologies.
The movement has begun. The use of smartphones will become widespread in the coming years and this trend is a rather good sign for health insurance. A study carried out by the audit firm PriceWaterhouseCooper (pwc) and relayed by the daily Le Parisien anticipates that smartphones and tablets should save 11.5 billion euros in health expenditure in France by 2017. savings are valued at 99 billion across the European Union. “A generalization of the use of mobile solutions would contribute to an optimized management of chronic diseases and the consequences linked to the aging of the population, two of the priorities of the European Union”, reports the study.
Equip for better care
How can “m-health” give such good economic prospects? By facilitating prevention and helping patients to treat themselves. For example, sending SMS for better follow-up of patients with diabetes and other chronic diseases would help to reduce sick leave for chronic diseases by 70%. The study goes further and predicts that if m-health were generalized, French GDP would increase by 13 billion euros!
For the time being, this optimism remains conditional on equipping patients with appropriate mobile solutions. Which is far from being the case today. The audit firm therefore advocates the creation of “innovative reimbursement mechanisms that encourage patients and medical device suppliers to adopt mobile solutions”.
