mHealth can treat 40 mn patients in Latin America

mHealth adoption in Latin America can lead to treating 40 million additional patients in Brazil and Mexico

The GSMA today unveiled research that demonstrates the socio-economic transformation that mHealth adoption will have in Latin America, with findings indicating that more than 40 million additional patients could be treated in Brazil and Mexico alone in 2017 through the use of mHealth services.

A new GSMA report, developed in collaboration with PwC and released today at HOSPITALAR 2013 in Sao Paulo, identified significant benefits of mHealth implementation in Brazil and Mexico in 2017 that will help in: empowering poor and chronic patients; extending healthcare to 28.4 million additional patients in Brazil and 15.5 million patients in Mexico in 2017; equipping 16 mn citizens to improve their lifestyle and reduce the impact of chronic diseases; sustaining universal healthcare systems; enhancing quality of care and efficiency of care delivery, saving $17.9 billion in costs; and creating 200,000 jobs to support mHealth deployments across Brazil and Mexico

"mHealth can help countries like Brazil and Mexico tackle the significant challenge of providing universal healthcare to a large, dispersed population," said Jeanine Vos, executive director, mHealth at the GSMA.

"The pressures on healthcare resources and the increasing burden of chronic diseases make it key to deploy innovative and cost-effective solutions. mHealth will enhance the reach, efficiency of spend and effectiveness of care to provide better quality health services to more people. Therefore it is critical that governments and regulators work with healthcare providers and mobile operators to drive mHealth adoption," commented Vos.

There are four main sets of barriers that will limit the adoption of mHealth across Latin America. These include: regulatory, economic, structural, and technology.

Policy and regulatory approaches are not yet developed to support mHealth solutions reaching patients and healthcare professionals quickly and effectively. The absence of clear regulatory frameworks that guide the development and deployment of these services is slowing down adoption

Current healthcare systems incentivise individual treatments and medical prescriptions rather than focus on preventative and continuous care. It is important to build clinical evidence that demonstrates the positive impact mHealth can provide, in order to get buy-in from the clinical community and payors, such as governments and insurers.

The fragmentation of healthcare systems in Brazil and Mexico restricts the sharing of information and alignment of processes, preventing mHealth from scaling effectively.

The lack of interoperability and standardisation of mHealth solutions can localise the implementation, limiting the scalability of mHealth

The GSMA is calling on regulators to create an environment that incentivises and encourages the use of mHealth. This will require regulators to work with governments and healthcare providers to ensure greater cohesion; advocate sharing of evidence and case studies; reward performance gains from mHealth to expedite its implementation; and educate and support citizens in adopting mHealth services for wellness and treatment.