World Congress hosts 3 mHealth, telemedicine events in Boston

Telemedicine, mobile healthcare and mHealth entrepreneurs are intersecting - quite literally - this week in Boston.

Three separate conferences are taking place over the next three days at the Collonade Hotel in a city known for its healthcare and technological innovation (not to mention baseball, chowder and strong accents), all under the auspices of the World Congress. The events kick off Wednesday with the mHealth Innovation Exchange Conference (a one-day affair) and the 4th Annual Leadership Summit on mHealth, which lasts through Friday, while the two-day World Congress Leadership Summit on Telemedicine launches into action on Thursday morning.

The innovation exchange conference begins with a debate on the pros and cons of mHealth, then offers a keynote from Aman Bhandari, PhD, senior technology advisor to the chief technology officer of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Following that address, 10 entrepreneurs will pitch their mHealth ideas to the audience. An afternoon panel session with the mHealth Congress Advisory Council will discuss the pitches and offer lessons learned from other entrepreneurs entering the space.

The innovation exchange conference flows right into the main event, the World Congress Annual Leadership Summit on mHealth, a three-day conference that explores, among other issues, the regulatory landscape for mobile health apps and devices; business models for startups; consumer trends in mobile health solutions; the use of mHealth in behavioral health, diabetes management and other chronic conditions; using games and social media; global examples of mHealth projects; Medicaid issues and the text4health mobile initiative.

Among the more prominent panel presentations will be a discussion of mobile medical regulations in the United States and worldwide, moderated by Pramod Gaur, PhD, vice president of telehealth for UnitedHealth Group, and including Bakul Patel, MS, MBA, of the FDA and Brad Merrill Thompson, JD, who counsels both the mHealth Regulatory Coalition and the Continua Health Alliance. Another panel discussion on best practices in medical device security will feature John Halamka, MD, MS, of Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Kaiser Permanente's John Mattison, MD, and Deven McGraw of the Center for Democracy and Technology, among others.

Telemedicine shares the podium on Thursday with the launch of that two-day conference. Among the topics to be discussed there are transitions to a virtual care model; funding opportunities and grant programs; programs for pediatric care, telepsychiatry and diabetes management; e-prescribing opportunities; and the use of telemedicine to assist the Medicaid population.

Both the mHealth and telemedicine program will share a Thursday panel discussion on the world-renowned Joslin Diabetes Center's "Joslin Everywhere" Diabetes Mobile Health Initiative. The panel will feature Joslin's Martin Abrahamson, MD, Ed Charbonneau and Paul Penta, MBA, and be moderated by Joseph Kvedar, MD, director of the Center for Connected Health.

They'll also come together on Friday for a discussion of telemedicine and mHealth in Medicaid, moderated by HIMSS member Joyce Hunter, who helped found the National Health Technology Collaborative for the Underserved, and featuring Chris Kern, MBA, of MDwise, and David Mathison, MD, MBA, of the Children's National Medical Center and the George Washington University School of Medicine.
 

Eric Wicklund

Editor of mHIMSS.org

Follow Eric on Twitter @eriwick