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Mobile health applications or Apps by Alison Diana.

Despite its relative infancy, the crowded mobile healthcare app market features a handful of well-established veterans and a plethora of newcomers scrambling for visibility and traction among consumers and medical professionals. The market includes more than 100,000 apps, according toResearch2Guidance — and the flood of new entrants shows no sign of easing, says Ralf-Gordon Jahns, founder of the Berlin-based research firm, in an interview.

“Mobile technology is truly revolutionizing the future of healthcare, and mobile apps in particular have played an important role in improving communication between physicians and patients, increasing adherence to medical prescriptions, helping patients locate good doctors and pharmacies, and encouraging preventative measures,” says Jeff Holleran, senior director of Enterprise Product Strategy at BlackBerry. “Both doctors and patients are finding that mobile apps can provide a fast and efficient way to stay in touch and exchange information. Providers are leveraging apps so that they can respond quicker and share data faster. On the consumer side, mobile apps are growing in popularity as people become increasingly more conscious about their health and well-being.”

Although some apps have a clear lead in categories such as running, fitness, and nutrition, that hasn’t stopped new contenders from releasing their own offerings. They may offer a new perspective — anything from being chased by zombies to focusing on strength training for women — or target a specific group of often neglected users, such as owners of BlackBerry or Windows mobile devices.

Health tracker Nudge, for example, recently moved away from Web-based apps in order to focus all its resources on mobile health apps. The developer created an algorithm based on recommendations from the US Department of Agriculture, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the World Health Organization, and applied research from an internal team of health professionals to index data input by users, says Phil Beene, co-founder, in an email.

“This means that no matter what apps, trackers, or wearables a person is using, they can compare an indexed score, called the Nudge Factor, to friends and other users on the app,” added Mac Gambill, co-founder of Nudge, in an email. “By tracking dietary intake, hydration, exercise, and sleep duration, as well as syncing with the leading apps and wearables, Nudge is becoming the principal curator and indexer of the best health and fitness apps on the market.”

New and existing developers fit into six general categories, Research2Guidance found. They include:

1. Established healthcare players — such as pharmaceutical, insurance, and healthcare companies — which represent about 3.4% of app publishers. Usually larger organizations, they typically publish many mHealth apps but have a below-average reach in terms of downloads.

2. App specialists are generally smaller developers that entered mHealth to leverage their software expertise. Although they usually have a small share of medical expertise in-house, they account for 14% of the mHealth app publisher community.

3. Helpers, which represent 32% of this space, are small companies that want to help others. Revenue is secondary, and could be one reason 61% had fewer than 5,000 downloads in 2013.

4. Medical specialists use their expertise to develop mobile apps and claim one fifth of the market. This group had the largest number of companies that earned more than $1 million from their mHealth apps last year.

5. Fitness specialists joined the market to earn money, and they account for 10% of this space. Often they connect to medical databases and sensors and use app development tools.

6. Connectors create value-rich apps that integrate with other apps, sensors, and databases, enabling them to generate the highest average revenue. They account for 18% of the mHealth developer community.

Combined, mHealth apps will be worth about $26 billion by 2017 — but that’s just the beginning of mobile apps’ impact on the vast healthcare market, estimated at $6 trillion, Jahns says.

“The $26 billion is the tip of the iceberg. The huge potential is: ‘Do apps allow [the healthcare industry] to save costs, for example, hospitals to send out patients earlier so they can use the beds for somebody else? Or do they reduce the amount of doctor visits?’ The true potential is reducing costs and making the healthcare market more efficient,” he says.

Of course, consumers might argue their goal is losing weight, eating healthier, monitoring medications, or protecting themselves from bugs. In that case, check out some newer mHealth apps on the market and let us know what you think. Which new health and fitness apps would you add to the list? Which ones would you remove? Tell us in the comments.

Utilizing social media to grow & market our business and being in closer touch with our clients are important business activities. Many of us read our email, research the net using google, relaxes by reading jokes and watching short video clips at facebook and other sites. We use the internet to make decisions, buying a car, finding more research and data about a product or service.

We no longer depend on others to give us research. We come to meet our doctors prepared with our own research. Of course, face to face with a professional is still very important.

But most of us, create our image through our web sites. We connect regularly to our customers and prospects using our web sites/blogs/email.

What do you think helped you a lot as a business owner of the 21st century? What social media were used and how did you use it to increase revenue, find more customers or build relationships with others?

Please email me your feedback with the use of technology and social media to increase revenue or generate more sales for your business.

I know some business owners are not happy with Yelp and other sites. Share your stories as business owners.

Money can’t buy everything — including great health care.

The U.S. spends the most of any country on its health care system, and yet it ranked the lowest out of 11 industrialized nations in overall healthcare quality, according to a report published Monday by the Commonwealth Fund.

The report, which covered the years 2011-2013, compared more than 80 indicators of U.S. health care spending, quality and performance to the likes of Australia, the United Kingdom, France, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, and Sweden, among other developed nations.

The UK, which was ranked highest, blew the U.S. out of the water, despite the fact that the country spends less than half as much on health care per capita ($3,406 on average, compared to $8,508 in the U.S.). The U.S. also spends the most on health care as a percentage of GDP (17%) than any other other nation.

Here’s where the U.S. health care system is failing:

Death rates: The U.S. ranked lowest among other nations in infant mortality rates and  deaths that could have been preventable with timely access to health care. The country also had the second-lowest life “healthy expectancy age” at 60.

Access to affordable care: Low-income people in the U.S. were far likelier to ignore medical issues because of cost than other nations. Nearly 40% of American adults with below average incomes said they did not visit a doctor or fill a prescription due to costs, compared to less than 10% in of adults in the U.K., Sweden, Canada, and Norway. Low-income people in the U.S. were also more likely to wait longer to see a specialist than high-income patients. Even doctors take notice. In the report, nearly 60% of U.S. doctors admitted that health care affordability was a problem for their patients.

Health care quality: Quality was one of the few measures the U.S. showed strength in the Commonwealth report. The U.S. had relatively high scores (4th place) in effective care and patient-centered care (care delivered with the patient’s needs and preferences in mind), but it suffered from low scores in safe and well-coordinated care.

Efficiency: With so much money pumped into health care and so little to show for it, it’s no wonder the U.S. ranked last in efficiency. It scored lowest in reports of administrative hassles (e.g., dealing with insurers), timely access to records and test results, and re-hospitalization. Forty percent of U.S. adults who went to the E.R. in 2011 said their condition could have been treated by a regular physician but could not be seen in time — more than twice the rate in the U.K. The U.S. also scored lowest in communication among healthcare providers and duplicate medical testing.

 

Whole Foods is a focused first mover.

I don’t care how many headlines there are that speculate otherwise: McDonald’s will never be Starbucks, Taco Bell will never be Chipotle, and stores like Safeway and Wal-Mart will never be Whole Foods.

Those other concepts can try to copy, but they lack the focus, commitment, and authenticity to pull it off. Consumers may not be able to quite put it into words, but as a group they can spot a fake.

McDonald’s is the best-run large-scale fast food company I’ve seen. I marvel at its efficiency and relative consistency around the world. But that distinctive McDonald’s smell and the statues of Ronald McDonald just don’t evoke the same upscale, relaxing coffee shop feel a Starbucks does. McDonald’s will never be that “third place” for most of Starbucks’ targeted audience.

While Taco Bell is associated with post-midnight “fourth meal” runs by frat brothers and jokes about the quality of its meat, Chipotle has a clean, higher-end feel and is all-in on “food with integrity.” Taco Bell’s Cantina Bell menu loses a lot of allure to typical Chipotle devotees when you can get gorditas, chalupas, and Doritos Locos Tacos at the same drive-through window.

It’s the same way with Whole Foods. Traditional grocers and one-stop shops are adding organic food sections and offerings, but Whole Foods is all-in on organic. The company and its employees actually seem to care about organics — rather than simply caring about losing market share to organics. The store experience (which we’ll get more into soon) is vastly different at a Whole Foods versus a regular grocer, a Target, and certainly a Wal-Mart.

As for the clones that are popping up, even if they are adept at copying Whole Foods’ playbook (very hard to do … no one’s yet successfully stolen Starbucks’ or Chipotle’s), they’re playing well behind a first mover. If you combined the annual sales of Sprouts, The Fresh Market, and Natural Grocers, they’d equal about a third of Whole Foods’ $13.6 billion in sales.