I loved this tweet from HP Healthcare on the 4 Key Pillars for effective mobile health.
Effective #mobile #health is relies on 4 key pillars: people, places, payment & purpose http://t.co/CW9UD9zhUZ
— HP Healthcare (@HPHealthcare) January 25, 2014
Here are the 4 pillars for those who might not see the embedded tweet:
- People
- Places
- Payment
- Purpose
As I look through these pillars, the one that I think we’re missing most is purpose. This isn’t that we have a purpose. All of the apps have the purpose of improving someone’s health. That’s a noble purpose and they all have that as their goal. This purpose in my book means that the app actually achieves the intended purpose.
As I wrote previously, there are so many apps and so few users. The solution to this problem is creating apps that are effective at achieving their goals. An app that can move the needle, change behavior, or somehow provide tangible value to the user is one that will get many, many more users. We’re just not there yet.
Some people are concerned by this fact. I’m not. I’m excited about the potential of it all along with the amazing number of intelligent people that are working to find a solution. We’re still early in this iteration of mobile health companies and I believe we’ll see some major breakthroughs in how we look at health. However, we aren’t there yet.
