Mobile Health Tools on the Rise

The year 2015 could be a big year for mobile health, especially within the field of telemedicine.

FierceHealthIT’s Susan D. Hall cites four reasons why this particular sector is set to blossom this year:

• Faster Internet connections and better software provide a better video chat experience than in the past.
• With mobile devices, people can consult a doctor from anywhere.
• The adoption of electronic health records makes it easier for doctors to access patient records.
• Patients are comfortable with asynchronous messaging, which can be more timeefficient for doctors.

Essentially, the proliferation of Internet-connected smartphones and wearable devices has made it possible for patients to communicate with physicians all over the world.

We’ve highlighted three startups that are taking advantage of this technology to assist people in finding the care they need.

Talkspace

Roni and Oren Frank have targeted mental health, rather than the crowded area of data regarding physical activity.

The married couple created Talkspace, an app that helps people talk to more than 200 licensed therapists with a couple clicks of the keyboard. No topic is off limits and a therapist is available to talk 24/7.

The Verge’s Arielle Duhaime-Ross describes the set-up process: download the app, create a username, and type a message. Users will never have to fill out long and complicated questionnaires detailing their previous mental health history.

After a message is sent, the patient and therapist will enter a protected chatroom that no one else can enter. Free consultations are part of the sign-up process, but there are several different types of pricing tiers.

In an interview with Mashable, Roni Frank shared the origins of the app.

Roni’s friend committed suicide at the age of 50. Her friend didn’t want to seek help because he viewed depression as being “weak” or “not normal.”

Roni disagreed with that outlook and felt there was a stigma attached to mental health. So she teamed up with her husband in 2012 to launch Talkspace. The goal was to “democratize psychotherapy” by cutting costs and making this service more “conducive to the way we talk to each other every day,” according to Mashable.

Techcrunch reported that Talkspace gained $2.5 million in funding in May 2014. The new capital will be geared towards attracting more patients and therapists to the platform.

Columbia University’s Portable HIV Test

Dr. Samuel Sia, assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia University, and his team of researchers manufactured a smartphone accessory that can quickly and efficiently find traces of HIV and syphilis in drops of blood.

The professor posted a video on his YouTube channel illustrating how the attachment, also known as a dongle, works:

• Healthcare workers need to collect a blood sample from a patient.
• Place the sample into a plastic container. Next, insert the container into a micro-fluidic chip.
• The chip is loaded into the dongle. The dongle can be plugged into the audio port of any electronic device.
• Open an app on the device the dongle is attached to and enter the patient’s ID. The video shows a black pump on the dongle. Press it and the device begins processing the blood.

 Fifteen minutes is all it takes for the program to detect pathogens in the blood sample.

A paper published in Science Translational Medicine discusses the test trial Sia’s team conducted on 96 people in Rwanda.

Buzzfeed News reports that 97 percent of the patients participating in the study “recommended the device due to its fast turn-around time and relative painlessness compared to the multiple blood tests usually necessary for standard screening.”

The device’s cost is an attractive element too: about $34 to make while the price tag of its competitors are typically $18,450, according to Buzzfeed.

PEEK

Projections from the World Health Organization (WHO) estimate that 285 million people all over the world are visually impaired in some form. WHO’s statistics reveal that 90 percent of this population reside in third world countries. Also, these individuals are unable to access the care they need to treat various maladies, like cataracts, since eye doctors dwell in major cities that are miles away from  villages.

Last summer, Ozy Media’s Melissa Pandika profiled Andrew Bastawrous, an ophthalmologist who invented a tool that helps solve this problem.

“Few people realize that blindness can be prevented or treated in more than 80 percent of cases,” said Pandika.

“One of the most common reasons people remain blind is they believe nothing can be done,” Bastawrous divulged.

The doctor developed a Portable Eye Examination Kit (PEEK).  PEEK’s essential service is fusing a mobile app and piece of hardware together to make a smartphone become a pint-sized ophthalmologist clinic.

A health care professional simply needs to activate the app to launch a basic vision test. The phone’s camera hovers over the patient’s eye scanning for cataracts, and the camera’s flashlight searches for other diseases. GPS data and contact information are stored by PEEK so these details can be sent to other doctors.

A suite of apps are available that cover every form of treatment: visual acuity, fundoscopy, cataract imaging, and more. Pandika’s article states that the total price tag of the kit is “only about $500,”adding that the high-tech equipment operated by a team of trained professionals at hospitals can cost around $160,000.

For now, PEEK is only available as an Android application.

Bastawrous launched a pilot study in July 2014 following 5,000 people in Kenya, which is scheduled to conclude in March 2015.