17k mobile health wellness and fitness apps out in the wild…and growing! #mhealth #wearabletech #dctovc #health2con
— Lauren (@laurencstill) September 30, 2013
In my last post I referenced the volume of mobile health apps that are out there. I found it interesting that at the Health 2.0 conference they put the number at 17,000 mobile health apps. That’s a lot of mHealth apps. I wonder if they have a list of all 17,000 mHealth apps somewhere.
It’s interesting for me to compare this number with the number of EHR vendors (in the 300-600 range). Everyone says we have too many EHR vendors and that we’re in for some EHR consolidation. What does that mean for the mHealth market?
Certainly in many ways it’s a very different market. Mobile health applications apply to both healthcare professionals and consumers. EHR vendors are only purchased by healthcare professionals, so there’s a smaller market. It’s challenging to consider how the mobile health application market will play out. How many of those applications will ever become a business instead of just an application?
My guess is that very few of them will really become businesses. Many of the startup mHealth applications will just close up shop. Many of the mHealth apps built by large companies will be shutdown and written off as a loss. A few startup mHealth applications will really take off and get acquired by a larger company (likely one of those who wrote off their own app).
How do you see the mobile health market playing out?
Dear John,
Thanks for such an enduring question. mHealth products market is dominated with either IT based companies or medical/hospital/pharma companies. Almost none thinks and acts from the point of patients. I think groups whom do perform with empathy with patients will play a major role in the market in a few years.