I am regularly asked which mHealth product is the best or coolest or most likely to disrupt healthcare delivery. I am also asked which companies mobile operators should be looking to partner with or investors should look at acquiring. And then I get asked which mHealth products I actually use. Now you’d expect with our global GSMA position and a database sitting behind the Tracker looking at more than 1000 products across more than 25 research filters that we would have an office of gadgets and for each staff member to be carrying every imaginable feature and smart phone laden loaded with all the latest technologies. The sad reality is that we aren’t tech junkies hanging out in the canteen showing off our latest finds. Not until recently that is…
For the last few weeks I’ve been part of a clinical trial that GSMA has pulled together to look at how mHealth can support endurance athletes living with type I diabetes. Before you ask – I’m not diabetic and I’m not an endurance athlete! I was part of the control group asked to participate in the mHealth Grand Tour. Each of us were injected with biosensors, given a mobile phone and asked to ride from Brussels to Barcelona – no small feat that covered 2100km and 22000m of climbing in just 13 days!
Needless to say, 100km into the first day of riding I realised I had totally underestimated endurance bike riding. After riding the remaining 70km of that first day in a very dark place, I arrived at the hotel and handed all my mHealth devices in to our technical and medical crews. It was only later that night when I reviewed my glucose levels against performance and chatted to the guys from Team Novo Nordisk that I realised how critical it would be, even for a non-diabetic, to monitor what I was eating, how I was eating, how I was riding and the impact that had on my health and performance for the rest of the ride.
Seeing the impact that real time data monitoring had on the lives of diabetic and non-diabetic riders over the 13 days, I’m convinced that mHealth is going to shift the demand and supply curve of healthcare in a fundamental way. I’ve been converted from manager to global advocate and user of mHealth technologies!