I came from Apple – really one of the golden eras of Silicon Valley iPod to iPad. Emphasis on integrated systems, user centric design. A certain smoothness and fluidity to the approach to problems and goals. I joined UCSF in January as the Assistant Director of TeleMedicine. It turns out the American TeleMedicine Association considers mHealth part of TeleMedicine. What’s mHealth? mHealth stands for mobile Health. You’ll see various definition. What I’d like to think is when people look at UCSF they’ll say. Now that’s mHealth. But I am getting ahead of myself.
This is what I found at UCSF. I started meeting you. I or my team have probably sat down with half of you here. I learned about the Grant process. Things became clearer.
It costs a lot to develop mobile apps. Some had good relationships with their vendors, I’d say the majority though had items that could be improved. Grants often want examples of a technology that does not yet exist and in fact part of the grant is expected to pay for. Who else was working on mobile apps? Patient Centric. Looking at ways to reach out to your patients. We started a brown bag series. Collaboration - Pain map example. We may have ended up paying for this multiple times – we still might. But it’s a lot less likely now.
So we (mostly Larry Suarez) took the approach of defining a mobile architecture which could use layers to abstract the functions needed to run an application on a mobile device and using XML as the input to create the application itself. Basically an application generator. This is what I call a takeaway slide. Its my favorite slide because as an engineer I like these sorts of diagrams however its too busy for today.
We noted these common functions. The framework was designed to allow us to drastically reduce the time to be able to provide a prototype. Overcoming the grant catch-22. Allows for an iterative process because we make quick changes so we can measure hands-on effectiveness. We can track it. Allows us to be flexible. We need to be able to move quickly because the technology will move quickly. So we can become very agile front-end for the point of care.
So if you think of the point of care as the front-end we have half the equation and I think the most fun part. Here’s where the hard work comes in. The back-end or what some facetiously call “the plumbing”. Mobility will allows to gather copious amounts of data. We already have copious amounts of data. How do we access and utilize information as seamlessly as possible? And remember - Mobile is just a part of this. This sort of framework lets us deliver the right information precisely where it is needed, when it is needed. It’s a big job, but the good news it can be done in steps and UCSF is not alone.
This is how we can shorten the times to deliver the hard work. We seek out partners to collaborate with. Leverage their expertise to help us create an integrated mobile technology framework. With the Operational Excellence and Epic initiatives underway this is a great opportunity to create a platform for UCSFs mHealth visions to be realized
And what is that vision? I think finding the answer to that question is why we’re all here. I just wanted to share with you Intel’s vision, shot at TedMed in November of 2009. A year ago.
Why did I choose these companies? The promise of mhealth is the ability to connect as many people as possible with not just healthcare but wellness. It really needs to be solved in two directions. Enterprise models that scale and “hands-on” patient interactions. What is UCSFs vision?