Nokia Knocking on Healthcare’s Door
15th January 2010
Not so long ago Nokia, along with most other companies in the mobile market, was actively promoting healthcare applications. The Nokia 3220 phone with built it RFID reader was being used as part of Allévo’s home health care system to register visits to patients. In 2007 Nokia released its Wellness Diary, which is still available from the company’s Beta Labs but is somewhat overshadowed by the mainstream music and entertainment applications Nokia headlines. This is in stark contrast to Apple whose iPod seems to gain a new healthcare ‘app’ on an hourly basis.
An interesting article, published last week in the Economist Magazine, points to the dilemma faced by conventional mobile handset companies, such as Nokia, who are trying to develop their own applications and services. The article points out that companies such as Orange and Vodafone would rather handset manufacturers did not gain access to the network operator’s subscribers. Apple and Research In Motion have gained the march on other equipment makers by building up their own end user customer base – this is probably why there are a growing number of ehealth applications that run on iPods and Blackberries.
Both Vodafone and Orange, two of the mobile network providers that Nokia supplies handsets to, are making a second attack on the healthcare market. Vodafone has recently announced a new mhealth initiative. The first, which coincided with the launch of the UKs NHS’s National Programme for IT, was disrupted during the reorganisation of Vodafone’s research and development divisions.
However the mobile network operators face similar barriers to Nokia as they attempt to enter the healthcare market. For while Vodafone and Orange have direct access to end-users these healthcare consumers actually belong to someone else – healthcare and insurance providers. As compelling as an mhealth may be, unless the healthcare provider is willing to provide the content and back office infrastructure, applications and services will suffer the same fate as Nokia’s Wellness Diary.
There are ways mhealth could possibly be introduced without cooperation from incumbent healthcare providers. mHealth services could be bundled with mobile applications such as M-PESA, which has been developed by Vodafone and Sagentia for Safaricom in Kenya and is now being used in other developing countries. Like M-PESA, mobile health would face little resistance from relatively weak incumbent healthcare providers in developing countries. Once mhealth business models are fully developed they could then be imported back into the US and European markets. This is also an option open to Nokia, which already markets its Nokia Money service and Life Tools in developing countries.
Another strategy is one that was adopted by Orange when it first started to promote mobile phones as a healthcare tool. That is to attempt to use mobile communications to change the whole healthcare ecosystem. In conjunction with Indri Tulusan, who at that time was based at the Royal College of Art, Orange developed the Circles of Care concept which, if taken to its logical conclusion, would become the basis for a community based, patient centric, healthcare system. Tulusan has since moved to T-Mobile where she works in service innovation and interaction design. While the Circles of Care programme no longer exists the concept is alive and well as a glint in the eye of proponents of the Google Health or Health 2.0 model of healthcare. This model would see the centre of gravity of a healthcare system pulled away from the incumbent healthcare provider towards an online provider of care management and diagnosis. This next generation provider would use technology to reduce costs and manoeuvre itself to become the most economic link between the insurance provider and the treatment centre. An ambitious plan - probably a bit too ambitious for a mobile network operator let alone a handset manufacturer.
