Chuck Parker is executive director of Continua and vice president of the Personal Connected Health Alliance, of which Continua is a partner with HIMSS and the mHealth Summit. A healthcare professional with more than 20 years in the industry, he was most recently chief technology officer and senior vice president of business development at Masspro, one of the nation's leafing performance improvement organizations dedicated to advancing healthcare quality.
Q. What's the one promise of mHealth that will drive the most adoption over the coming year?
A. We are now seeing second- and third-generation products on the market, and these devices are continuing to get better. These newer products are more user-friendly, smaller and have incorporated lessons learned from pilot programs. Better, smarter, more convenient products will drive adoption. We are also seeing bigger players move into the arena. Apple and Google have both announced plans, along with Samsung, to deliver on health.
Q. What mHealth technology will become ubiquitous in the next 5 years? Why?
A. Within the next five years, I expect cell-based apps and data collection through a smart or intelligent handset will be the newest trend in mHealth. iOS and Android already have the technology to enable this. We may even see devices with SIM chips directly linking to a service.
Q. What's the most cutting-edge application you're seeing now? What other innovations might we see in the near future?
A. Developing platforms that are simple to connect, with good back-end cloud service, will be important advances in the near future. Also, in order for companies to succeed, they will need to effectively market these systems to drive demand. We are seeing this with Apple, IBM, Qualcomm and Telcos internationally.
Q. What mHealth tool or trend will likely die out or fail?
A. There are two devices that I believe will be replaced by newer form factors. First, sensors in clothing will likely be limited. Unless they get cheaper and can be placed in every piece of clothing, wearability becomes an issue. A watch or a smartphone makes wearability much easier and will eventually replace sensors in clothing.
The second tool likely to significantly decline is stand-alone activity trackers. The new trend will be embedding tracking capabilities into the smartphone or a smartwatch-like device or even headphones. We are already seeing great interest in smartwatches, and I predict they will eventually replace single trackers.
Q. What mHealth tool or trend has surprised you the most, either with its success or its failure?
A. Smart sensor watches have really surprised me the most. This has been a market with many entrants lately and some are gaining traction. Developed correctly, I believe smartwatches have staying power in the market.
Q. What's your biggest fear about mHealth? Why?
A. If the medical side of the equation resists using mHealth for liability reasons or because it costs too much in productivity, unfortunately I think mHealth will have difficulty gaining traction. If a doctor isn't willing to incorporate mHealth or personal connected health technologies in his or her practice, the individual is either faced with switching physicians or limited use of the data. We need providers to embrace mHealth and make it part of their care delivery.
Q. Who's going to push mHealth "to the next level" – consumers, providers or some other party?
A. Payers will most certainly be the biggest champions for mHealth. Whether government, commercial or individual, payers want to see better outcomes and get a handle on healthcare costs. With richer data, we can avoid unnecessary medical visits and better maintain health and wellness. In many instances, mHealth is more convenient and cost effective, while maintaining quality care.
Q. What are you working on now?
A. Continua and the Personal Connected Health Alliance are, right now, focused on FDA acceptance of mHealth and technology-enabled care delivery, as well as reimbursement strategies.
Previous interviews in our mHealth masters series:
Harry Greenspun, MD on the promise of applied analytics
AirStrip CEO Alan Portela on the coming clinical transformation
WLSA CEO Rob McCray on the most cutting-edge technologies today
