Health­care as an indus­try has under­gone a great deal of change with the onset of dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy. Increas­ing­ly it is the per­son­al­iza­tion of ded­i­cat­ed health mon­i­tor­ing tools, par­tic­u­lar­ly on mobile devices, that is bring­ing inno­va­tion to both the health­care indus­try, and to mobile devices. A recent Har­ris Poll has revealed that U.S. con­sumers are ready to take on the tech­nol­o­gy.

Smart­phones have always been the Swiss Army knives of tech­nol­o­gy. Dou­bling up as portable cam­eras, music play­ers, GPS devices, and gen­er­al­ly peo­ple’s one-stop por­tals to the con­nect­ed world, there seems to be no lim­it to the func­tion and util­i­ty they bring to peo­ple’s lives.

A Har­ris Poll of 2,537 U.S. adults revealed that large majori­ties of con­sumers are ready to try out mobile health­care tech­nol­o­gy when it becomes avail­able. The pri­ma­ry fea­tures respon­dents were “very inter­est­ed” in includ­ed; mon­i­tor­ing or check­ing their blood pres­sure (with 48 per­cent say­ing they were very inter­est­ed in this fea­ture), and mon­i­tor­ing their heart and heart­beat for irreg­u­lar­i­ties (47 per­cent). An addi­tion­al 23 per­cent and 22 per­cent, respec­tive­ly, said that they were “some­what inter­est­ed” in these fea­tures.

Inter­est­ing­ly, the sen­ti­ment was shared not just among mil­len­ni­als, but through a whole cross sec­tion of soci­ety.

Mobile Healthcare Key Facts And Statistics

Below is an overview of key stats and find­ings from the report. It shows that large num­bers of U.S. con­sumers are very inter­est­ed in mobile health­care ser­vices and attach­ments.

• Inter­est is par­tic­u­lar­ly strong for blood test­ing ser­vices (with 41 per­cent extreme­ly inter­est­ed and 21 per­cent some­what inter­est­ed).
• Using mobile attach­ments to pho­to­graph a user’s eye, cornea, or reti­na to diag­nose eye prob­lems had a strong response (with 40 per­cent very inter­est­ed, and 23 per­cent some­what inter­est­ed).
• Check­ing blood sug­ar or glu­cose lev­els received promis­ing respons­es (with 39 per­cent inter­est­ed, and 22 per­cent some­what inter­est­ed).
• Mea­sur­ing lung func­tion was a fea­ture that 38 per­cent of respon­dents were very inter­est in, and 23 per­cent were some­what inter­est­ed in.
• Diet track­ing had 36 per­cent of respon­dents very inter­est­ed, and 24 per­cent some­what inter­est­ed.

Mobile Healthcare Demographics

The key demo­graph­ics show that there is sig­nif­i­cant inter­est for mobile health­care from all sec­tors and seg­ments of soci­ety:

• Track­ing phys­i­cal activ­i­ty gen­er­at­ed strong inter­est from 57 per­cent of Mil­len­ni­als, 45 per­cents of Gen Xers, 35 per­cent of Baby Boomers, and 25 of Matures.
• Track­ing diet gen­er­at­ed strong inter­est from 50 per­cent of Mil­len­ni­als, 36 per­cent of Gen Xers, 28 per­cent of Baby Boomers, and 21 per­cent of Matures.
• Diag­nos­ing eye prob­lems gen­er­at­ed strong inter­est from 49 per­cent of Mil­len­ni­als, 38 per­cent of Gen Xers, 34 per­cent of Baby Boomers, and 36 per­cent of Matures.
• Mea­sur­ing lung func­tion gen­er­at­ed strong inter­est from 46 per­cent of Mil­len­ni­als, 35 per­cent of Gen Xers, 34 per­cent of Baby Boomers, and 34 per­cent of Matures.
• Check­ing blood pres­sure gen­er­at­ed strong inter­est from 51 per­cent of men vs. 45 per­cent of women.
• Con­duct­ing gen­er­al blood test­ing gen­er­at­ed strong inter­est from 45 per­cent of men vs. 38 per­cent of women.
• Check­ing blood sug­ar or blood glu­cose lev­els gen­er­at­ed strong inter­est from 43 per­cent of men vs. 35 per­cent of women.
• Men are also more like­ly than women to show a strong inter­est in mea­sur­ing lung func­tion at 41 per­cent of men vs. 35 per­cent of women.

Driving Demand For Mobile Healthcare

These are some pos­i­tive sta­tis­tics, but it seems the health­care indus­try isn’t mov­ing fast enough to meet con­sumer demand in mobile health ser­vices. A Deloitte report on “How mobile tech­nol­o­gy is trans­form­ing health care” explained how change is being dri­ven by con­sumer demand:

“Con­sumers are dri­ving much of the demand for mHealth tech­nolo­gies and appli­ca­tions. Mobile apps are enhanc­ing over­all con­sumer engage­ment in health care by increas­ing the flow of infor­ma­tion; low­er­ing costs through bet­ter deci­sion-mak­ing, few­er in-per­son [health­care] vis­its, and greater adher­ence to treat­ment plans; and improv­ing sat­is­fac­tion with the ser­vice expe­ri­ence.”

For con­sumers, mobile health­care has the poten­tial to make lives eas­i­er, and offer faster access to health care and high-qual­i­ty, per­son­al­ized care. The pos­si­bil­i­ties are vir­tu­al­ly lim­it­less: mobile can be a means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion; a way to sync real-time infor­ma­tion and mes­sages; a remote mon­i­tor, or smart devices, that brings care into the com­fort of peo­ple’s own homes offer­ing a means to check up on patients remote­ly, and a warn­ing sys­tem if any­thing goes wrong. It can also be a means for health­care staff and patients to inter­act via video con­fer­ence allow­ing them to give advice, sup­port, or sim­ply to remind them to take their med­i­cine.

The mobile oppor­tu­ni­ties avail­able to the health­care indus­try are a lead­ing exam­ple of how tech­nol­o­gy and inno­va­tion can dis­rupt, and reform an indus­try. It pro­vides busi­ness­es to devel­op more per­son­al­ized rela­tion­ships with con­sumers, and enhance their expe­ri­ences of a brand’s prod­uct or ser­vices.

What’s unique to health­care is that more than any oth­er indus­try, con­sumers are ready to embrace change and inno­va­tion that the indus­try pro­vides, espe­cial­ly if it means improv­ing their own well­be­ing or that of their loved ones. After all, what’s more valu­able to con­sumers, and indeed any of us, than our health?

Do you work in the health­care indus­try? What change do you think mobile and tech­nol­o­gy will bring to the every­day lives of con­sumers.