The GSMA represents the interests of nearly 800 mobile operators and 200 companies in the mobile ecosystem worldwide. The GSMA mHealth Programme aims to support more affordable and accessible healthcare through mobile technologies by running trials, fostering relationships between healthcare and mobile industries, promoting interoperability and growth, and showcasing solutions through events. Interoperability is fundamental to the success of mHealth by allowing connectivity between back-end systems, devices, providers and industries through mature standards.
For those of you who are not familiar with us, the GSMA represents the interests of the worldwide mobile communications industry. Spanning 219 countries, the GSM Association membership comprises 800 of the world’s mobile operators, as well 200 companies in the mobile ecosystem, including handset makers, equipment providers, software companies and others. The GSMA also produces industry-leading events such as the Mobile World Congress and Mobile Asia Expo.Our remit is to innovate, incubate and to create new opportunities for our membership, all with the goal of driving the growth of the mobile communications industry as well as looking at how mobile technology can be used in other vertical industries (such as healthcare) in order to drive innovation, cut cost and improve quality
In order to accelerate the uptake of mhealth and ensure that this great opportunity is seized, GSMA are together with our members running an mHealth programme with the aim to prove the case for mobile health and encourage adoption of mobile technology in healthcare.We have a number of aims with the programme:We are achieving our objectives through:Demonstrating outcomes and impacts on individuals, healthcare systems and society by running trials and producing evidence that show the benefits of mobile health. Fostering new relationships and partnering between the healthcare sector and the mobile industry. For example, GSMA have initiated a diabetes programme that is focusing on:Exploring how mobile health can support and transform diabetes care in established, emergent and developing health economiesDeveloping case studies and examples of best practice that we can share with health economies to accelerate the implementation of mobile health solutions for diabetesSupporting our members in reaching out to healthcare organisations, payers and patient associations, to encourage cooperation and partnership in diabetes solutionsSupporting operators in developing and delivering trials or pilot programmes with advice regarding strategy, study design, methodology and analysis – including recommendations on scalability and implementation Stimulating scalable, replicable technical solutions that promote hardware and software interoperability. Promoting policy and regulatory principles that will stimulate growth and innovation. For example, GSMA haveInitiated a Brussels work stream to raise the profile of mobile health among European Union regulatorsInitiated cooperation with such standards organisations as the Continua Health Alliance, whose objectives we support Showcasing mobile health solutions and advanced cross-industry awareness and knowledge through events and seminars in the healthcare industry
When we looked at the objectives of the GSMA mHealth programme earlier, one of the critical success factors that we highlighted that will enable mHealth to deliver it’s full potential, is to ensure that there is interoperability across devices, providers and indeed industries. In healthcare, interoperability is the ability for different information technology systems and software applications to communicate, to exchange data accurately, effectively, and consistently, and to use the information that has been exchanged. The pinnacle of interoperability, will be when we have true machine to machine communication. The full benefits of health data exchange will occur, and this will happen when these machines can interpret data,perform automatic functions, and we have an open, plug-and-play environment.This requires standards for health information exchange, patient data security and authentication.If interoperability is fully achieved, through the development of mature standards, mHealth will be able to achieve scale, moving awayfrom the current seen fragmented services into integrated, ubiquitous, value added products.The GSMA is working with partners such as the Continua Health Alliance to develop and promote technical standards and reference implementations that will lead to interoperable components and scalability for products and services, thus reducing costs and time to market for new solutions.
In summary, we can see that there are a broad range of stakeholders who will benefit from the development of the mHealth ecosystem, not least the patients, but also Governments in the form of payers, healthcare providers, vendors of mHealth products and services .The thought leadership and drive to deliver standards for interoperability by the Continua Health Alliance is a real enabler that is allowing mHealth become a reality in the Latam region, and around the world.