News From Around the Web
> With growing per capita healthcare expenditures both in developed and advanced developing countries, a new report from Allied Market Research projects that the mHealth market will reach $58.8 billion globally by 2020, at a CAGR of 32.3 percent from 2013 to 2020. The study observed that the global mHealth market was valued at $6.7 billion in 2012 and is estimated to reach $8.3 billion by the end of 2013. "This projection is backed by the fact such as due to technological advancement integration of wireless technology with the portable healthcare devices is feasible, increasing incidences of lifestyle diseases, cost and convenience factors, government initiatives, affordability of smartphones," states an announcement. Article
> The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has announced that it will hold an mHealth Innovation Expo on Dec. 6 at its headquarters in Washington. The event, hosted by the FCC's Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau, will "bring together innovators and federal agencies to showcase mobile health products and solutions and provide resources for mobile health pioneers and entrepreneurs," states the FCC announcement, which encourages consumers, healthcare technology developers, members of the media and others interested in mobile health technologies to attend. The mHealth Innovation Expo is free and open to the public. Article
> Miami-based Intelligent Living announced that the company has begun the development of its first four mHealth apps. The four titles--Track My Running, Step-O-Meter, Quit Smoking Now!, and apPillbox XL--will become available in the Google Play and iTunes app stores before the end of the year. Track My Running is a smartphone app that allows anyone to keep track of the exact whereabouts of their friends, family, or fellow runners at all times--even if they aren't physically with them. The Quit Smoking Now smartphone app sends encouraging messages to help people get through this tough time, as well as eep a log of their smoking habits to track progress and customize the frequency and content of messages. Article
Healthcare News
> Fixes to the troubled HealthCare.gov website appear to be working and the error rate is now less than 1 percent, according to a key White House official, The Hill reported. Jeff Zients, the former White House budget director who was recruited to oversee the website repairs, told reporters that the special fixes show progress, but he stopped short of saying that all the problems were corrected. "It's likely that, as we move forward, we'll find additional glitches," he said. "Our bottom line continues to be that by the end of November, we will have the site working smoothly for the vast majority of users." Next on the priority list is adding capacity to the system, according to Zients. The system is now handling 20,000 to 25,000 users at a time, according to The Hill. Article
Healthcare IT News
> An online calculator developed to help doctors identify risks and treatment options associated with high cholesterol overestimates such risks by as much as 150 percent, according to a research letter to be published this week in The Lancet, the New York Times reports. The flawed tool has been so widely panned that Steve Nissen, chief of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic and past president of the American College of Cardiology, is calling for implementation of new guidelines for lowering cholesterol unveiled last week to be halted. The calculator's problems derive from the fact that it uses outdated data as a primary source of information. That, in turn, means that the developers of the new guidelines used patient information from more than a decade ago in determining how cholesterol causes heart attacks and strokes. Article
And Finally… Better late than never. Article