Innovation and experimentation is everywhere. New digital technologies are fuelling creativity in all areas of industry and companies are using novel platforms to engage and excite their customers.

Healthcare is no exception. Despite complexities including regulatory compliance, adverse-event monitoring and risk disclosures, companies are continuing to grow more confident in applying innovative technologies, whether advertising to healthcare professionals or engaging in public awareness campaigns.

The last year has provided a number of outstanding examples of creativity in the industry. Here we will have a look at some of the highlights.

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What is it?

Precision medicine, also widely known as personalised medicine can be described as a medical model with customisation of care as the focus, where medical treatments and products are tailored to the individual. Precision medicine recognises that personal genetic, environmental and lifestyle factors are key drivers in both the causes and ability to overcome a disease and hence tailors the approach to care with these factors in mind.

What’s behind this trend?

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We are very concerned to hear about the ongoing ransomware attacks that involve many enterprises, including the NHS.  So we are glad that we can reassure all our clients that our servers and equipment was routinely patched in March, well before the attack started and within 24 hours of the patch being released by Microsoft, so that all our systems remain unaffected by this attack.

Microsoft’s critical patch that addresses the vulnerability was released on March 14th.  All medDigital desktops, laptops and Windows servers applied this patch within 24 hours of it being released and in many cases, on the day of release.

We believe this is another clear example that demonstrates why we need to comply with the right information governance standards to keep equipment and confidential data safe from malicious cyberattacks. Please get in touch if you’d like to find out more about how we ensure we are compliant and our software is routinely patched with the latest critical updates.

It has been estimated that there are over 2.2 million applications on the Apple App Store and 2.7 million on the Google Play store 1 with the numbers increasing by the day. With so much choice, it might be surprising to find that applications (and their related digital devices) remain underutilised within certain industries. In particular, when it comes to healthcare, despite the growing number of apps, uptake and sustained use remain low 2,3,4.

We believe that with growing pressures on healthcare systems and the economy, it is crucial to support people in taking charge of their health; that means making the most of technology. This is why we are trying to uncover the barriers people face in making the most of the healthcare apps. From this we seek to distil the key set of factors which lead to the success of apps and digital devices within healthcare, with the aim of making them better for everyone.

As part of this research, we are investigating what people look for in healthcare apps. We’ve created a short questionnaire that takes approximately 5 minutes to do. Please complete the questionnaire – your responses will make an impact.

For more information, feel free to contact us at healthappsimperial@gmail.com 

Thanks

References:
1. http://news.softpedia.com/news/google-play-store-vs-apple-s-app-store-a-comparison-512601.shtml
2. http://health.asiaone.com/health/health-news/health-apps-abound-usage-low
3. http://www.pewinternet.org/2013/11/26/part-three-tracking-for-health/
4. http://healthland.time.com/2010/10/21/in-the-candy-store-of-iphone-apps-users-treat-health-apps-like-broccoli/

Steph at the medCrowd booth and Felix giving a talk at the conference.

Earlier this month, the medCrowd team attended the eyeforpharma conference in Barcelona. The conference is the world’s largest commercial pharma summit, attended by over a thousand industry leaders and is located on Barcelona’s new seafront esplanade.

This year, one of the key topics discussed at the conference was “digital transformation” and how the pharma industry as a whole needs to close the innovation gap between current scientific and technological advancements available today, in comparison to what is currently delivered to patients.

Other themes discussed how the pharma industry is moving towards a more outcomes-based approach. This model demonstrates that those who deliver real-world evidence with real-time insights will have a competitive advantage over those companies who do not.

This year was the first eyeforpharma conference to have a specific Medical Affairs track, with talks by leaders in the field, including our own Felix Jackson who gave a talk on “Dynamic digital content development and approval” as well as showcasing the advantages of using technologies like medCrowd to help pharma companies, healthcare professionals and patients to work better together.

We are already looking forward to attending the eyeforpharma conference again next year 🙂

We’re pleased to anounce that medCrowd has been relaunched today.

Find out more about medCrowd’s Inspiring Story.