Comment by jilebedev | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jilebedev | Hacker News Reader

Solution in search of a problem.

Steve Blank speaks about the technology lifecycle adoption curve [1], and I think this entire "health + mobile" market is (optimistically) on the far left end of the curve.

The problem isn't the problem - it's how people feel about the problem. I know I can have a completely digital banking solution, with even phone support 24/7 if I need it, but I don't want that. Banking and my money is important to me, and when I need advice or have problems, I want to walk into a branch and speak with a real person. I'm not a dinosaur or a luddite - I'm 24, and I'm well versed in emerging technology.

I feel even more strongly about my health: I don't care that I can take a picture of my ear drum and send it to a doctor and have an antibiotic prescription that I can forward to my pharmacy and pick up in 30 minutes: there is something wrong with my body, I am concerned, this is important to me, and I want to speak to someone who is trained, credible, and can offer medical advice. The trouble with digital services that attempt to melt themselves into the physical world is that important things need to be dealt with by people. A doctor offers credibility and that is what I want. A 99c iPhone app offers no credibility, and for important things, credibility is important. If a doctor waves off my ear problem as "sleep on it for a few days, here's a note", I trust his advice and I'm more than willing to go through with it. If an iPhone app told me the same, I'd be probably reaching for the uninstall button around the time I'm dialing a doctor to make an appointment.

1. [PDF] page 23/45 http://www.stanford.edu/group/e145/cgi-bin/winter/drupal/upl...

I think speaking to a person is an expensive luxury. Far more of a luxury than a smartphone. Smartphones aren't cheap, but if you could get the ear thing to work, a few hundred random emergency room visits/year could be saved. average cost for one of those visits is about a thousand dollars, so this would literally save a million dollars.

I guess i'm arguing that very soon, everyone will have a smartphone. For a lot of poeple going to the doctor means going to the emergency room. being able to "ask the internet" and get some sort of quick treatment will ultimately help more people and cost less than what we do now. Sure, there is quack medicine, and that's clearly a bad thing. I'd wager there are more people who are sick but do nothing because the cost in time or money or both is just to high. Lowering the barrier to basic care is a good thing.

You're right but it has a chance to be widely adopted if it's the doctors themselves that are telling the patients "download this app, and use it the next time you have so and so". But if there's no doctor telling people to use it, you're absolutely right. The ones that stand a chance of being popular are those recommended clinically.

The others (like Fitbit, Jawbone, Basis, etc) are all niche products and they will quickly learn the harsh reality of fickle consumers who rather poke people on Facebook than track their health, even though one has far greater future benefits.

People who think mobile health is an emerging, cool trend need to take a step back, and ask not just what problem they're solving (btw, anyone ever wonder what problem FitBit is even solving????), but how to persuade/engage consumers in being proactive and using their app/device. If they can't solve that problem, they need to find out how to persuade hospitals/doctors/insurance companies that these apps can save them money or time.

Sounds like you are talking about self-diagnosis. I think the "health + mobile" market is really well suited to chronic care / ongoing issues, rather than one off or acute care issues.

If you know you have high blood pressure and your doctor has asked you to track your BP over time, an app to assist you makes a lot of sense.

We built http://dsharpdiabetes.com for similar reasons. It's not realistic to ask the modern smartphone user to carry around a pad of paper all day long for months at a time to track their stats.

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