'Health in Place' initiative seeks mHealth ideas from...everyone

With mobile health poised to push the successful healthcare delivery beyond the walls of the hospital or clinic, a group of advocates is looking outside the industry for new ideas.

The “Health in Place” initiative was launched December 6 at the mHealth Summit in Washington D.C. by Disruptive Women in Health Care, a group of bloggers dedicated to finding “provocative ideas, thoughts and solutions in the health sphere.” The initiative’s goal is to define how people maintain their health and look for new ideas to promote good healthcare.

“We’ve built this notion that it’s going to take more than the people in healthcare to answer today’s challenges,” said Robin Strongin, a Washington-based public affairs executive who launched the Disruptive Women blog and serves on Health in Place’s advisory board.

“If we look at mHealth just through the lens of healthcare, we’re going to be doing people a disservice,” she said. “We need to be a bit more audacious and broaden our definition of ‘health.’ How do we take what’s been successful in other sectors and apply that to our lives?”

The group’s goal is to redefine the concept of healthcare to incorporate daily life. That might mean incorporating health and wellness designs in homes and cars, landscaping design, entertainment, even taxation and insurance. Organizers say they’re non-political and not a lobbying group. The idea, says Strongin, is that healthcare happens everywhere and at any time.

“If we are going to prevent the projected escalation in chronic illness, which threatens to overwhelm our healthcare system, we need to develop new and better ways to elevate the health of our fellow citizens. The good news is that the next frontier in consumer health and well-being is right on our doorstep – literally,” Strongin said in a press release announcing the initiative. “We crafted this new initiative to advance the next wave in consumer health and well-being, bringing the best of healthcare to the places where we spend virtually every hour of every day.”

Strongin and co-creator Randi Kahn have formed an advisory board of about 20 people – described as people from inside and outside the healthcare spectrum and including insurance executives, people in construction, real estate and accounting – and will convene that board in Jan. 17, 2012 in Washington D.C. The board’s goal, Strongin said, is to create a research agenda, identify gaps in mobile healthcare delivery and look for technologies to fill those gaps.

“We understand the gestalt of everything that we want to accomplish, but now we have to bite into what is manageable,” said Strongin. “We’re looking at taking a case-study approach. … We see ourselves as the change agent and the facilitator.”

She and Kahn are also quick to point out that while women might be behind the blogging group, the initiative is open to disruptive men as well.

“We are trying to force all his innovative and exciting new technology into a healthcare system that we all agree isn’t working right now,” she said. “It’s really like a giant petri dish.”

Eric Wicklund

Editor of mHIMSS.org

Follow Eric on Twitter @eriwick