MHealth business models changing.
Posted by Ron Otten on 08/07/2009
The business models for wireless based healthcare are fluid. eHealth style services are online but should the system enable the patient to manage their own health on there health portal? The UK NHSDirect has been set up and the Danish healthcare uses Sundhed.dk
Most ehealth services around the world adhere to a version of the model here on the right. Healthcare providers aspire to a more complex ehealth model. One in which all information flows are automated, data is held centrally and surgery, like other procedures that require physical contact with the patient, is carried out in special treatment centres. See the advanced eHealth Model on the left.
The Sundhed portal, as it is based on IBM’s WebSphere platform, could eventually act as a front end for the disease and public health monitoring applications. However the healthcare IT world has changed by the emergence of Google and Microsoft as potential suppliers of personal healthcare record vendors. IBM has itself acknowledged as much and is now, via the Continua Alliance, working with Google.
The idea that Microsoft and Google are merely a pair of disruptive new players in a healthcare market, where the incumbents cannot provide the tools that enable consumers to manage their own health, is a bit too simplistic. The threat to established healthcare providers is far more subtle than a direct and open attack on their business models. At first viewing, the threat appears to be from Google Health and Microsoft’s HealthVault themselves. However it is the ease to connect to there platform, hand out free of charge, to new entrants to the healthcare market that will create an enormous driving force.
As the ehealth developers armed with Google and Microsoft SDKs take healthcare into the clouds next generation healthcare providers will be start to use the disease knowledge-base their users construct to force the pharma industry into deals. In some cases these deals will disadvantage incumbent healthcare providers. This means that when, with the help of Google and Microsoft, cloud based ehealth providers start establishing themselves in the healthcare market the demise of the incumbent providers will be quick.
