With the objective of finding ways to improve the health and wellbeing of Europeans via the use of mobile devices – such as smartphones, tablets, patient monitoring apparatus and wireless terminals – the European Commission has launched an mHealth survey.
“Mobile healthcare will reduce the number of expensive hospital visits, help citizens to take charge of their own health and wellbeing and encourage an approach to health that focuses on prevention rather than treatment,” said Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the European Commission (EC).
According to the institution, by 2017 3.4 billion people in the world will have a smartphone and half of them will use Health applications. Today, almost 100 thousand medical apps are available on platforms such as iTunes, Google Play, Windows Marketplace and BlackBerry World.
Using these applications, which facilitate early diagnoses and encourage prevention rather than treatment, Europe could save 99 billion Euros in three years.
However, increasing awareness about the usability of mobile health is important not only because of the reduction of healthcare costs and expected returns on investment, medical apps also improve monitoring of chronic patients and allow healthcare professionals to spend up to 30 percent less time on accessing and analyzing users’ data.
Citizens, healthcare professionals, public authorities and telephone manufacturers will be able to express their opinions on the development of the apps in Europe.
The survey will place an emphasis on how to improve the security and privacy of user information, how to ensure interoperability between applications and how to incentivize businesses to invest in mobile health.
The survey is open until July 3 and the European Commission will publish a summary of the responses at the end of the year.
Click here to access the EC survey.
Source: European Commission
