M2M Now magazine explores the evolving opportunities and challenges facing CSPs across this sector. Our exclusive interviews pass on some key lessons learned by those who have taken the first steps in next gen Machine to Machine (M2M) services.
In the latest issue:
- TALKING HEADS: Alexander Bufalino of Telit tells how one-stop shops and M2M
with a ‘wired safety net’ make patient monitoring more efficient - SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT: SERVICE DELIVERY Carsten Ahrens shows why subscription management matters in securing the IoT
- NORDIC AREA REVIEW: What happens when M2M grows up? Telenor’s Robert Brunbäck has some answers.
PLUS: Ian Volans sheds light on what makes Nordic countries so good at M2M - M2M NOW DIRECTORY 2014 Detailed listings for key players in M2M and 600 companies worldwide
- SUPPLEMENT: M-HEALTH We bring you a Special 16-page mHealth Supplement to go with our Washington DC event, Money Talks – mHealth
Download machine-to-machine (M2M) Now Magazine PDF
Let’s talk more to end users!
I’m frustrated, and I’m not alone. This is about M2M in mobile Healthcare but it applies to other verticals, too. M2M isn’t working as it should. The US had a head start in mHealth: It has a Federal tax regime, and health and communications regulators; one official language, currency, and insurance-led payment model. So, it’s the perfect incubator for mHealth solutions, right? Wrong. Off the record, mHealth solution providers complain to us that they struggle to get wireless devices deployed behind hospital firewalls. IT departments are petrified of letting in a Trojan Horse that reveals Protected Health Information (PHI), and as they face epic fines and even jail if patient data leaks out, who can blame them? But if health plans, healthcare clearinghouses and providers can transmit PHI electronically for claims or eligibility inquiries, it must also be possible to make it easier for mHealth solution providers to meet the criteria of the USA’s Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
Meanwhile, costly and unevenly distributed healthcare in the US is set against a backdrop of the incompetent launch of “Obamacare”. It’s no better in Europe, where national governments (frequently the purse-holders) lurch from economic crisis (Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) to organisational catastrophe (the UK), to bloated expense (France and Germany). Even solution providers who can demonstrate the savings in OpEx that they can deliver are ignored because fixing the ‘Big Picture” is priority #1.
So why am I frustrated if, as one CEO says (see Supplement, page S4), “We’re standing on the threshold of a new generation of health services that cut delivery costs, extend the reach of care givers, and bring new levels of care to patients”? I don’t doubt him, I just don’t want us still to be standing on the threshold in two years’ time. If mHealth solutions are to help as we believe they can, this industry has to start selling its Benefits. Outwardly. I once assumed, naively, that Big Government understood M2M. Today, I don’t think it’s even aware of M2M or its benefits to patients; yet it might be a vital solution. It’s time that the M2M / IoT community (from CTIA, ETSI, GMA, GSMA, IMC, to M2M Alliance, oneM2M and the rest of the alphabet soup) actively invited the US FCC and FDA, the EC’s Directorate general for Health & Consumers, and national Departments of Health and Industry to meet regularly and discuss how we make mHealth solutions work for them, as Dan MacDuffie says, to “cut delivery costs, extend the reach of care givers, and bring new levels of care to patients.”
