Rising healthcare costs and prevalence of chronic disease are not merely American problems; they are affecting the delivery of care worldwide. The crunch, says a new PricewaterhouseCoopers report, will push millions upon millions of people to take more control over their own healthcare, often enabled by mobile technologies and the Internet.

"The overarching challenge for incumbent health systems will be to shift their internal focus from a siloed bureaucratic healthcare infrastructure to one that puts the patient at the center...and engages them to be active stakeholders in their health and the health system," the report reads.

In an interview with the Reuters news agency, David Chin, director of the PricewaterhouseCoopers Health Research Institute says that the Internet and mobile technologies would help to break down some of the silos, empower patients and save money. He is particularly interested in the potential of mobile monitoring systems. "We're optimistic that the combination of a personalized approach and better technology will improve the health of the population, and start addressing the cost issue," Chin says.

"Of course the advantage to an insurance company or (healthcare) delivery system is that is costs less to deliver care over the Internet," he adds. "You're able to reach a wider audience for a lot less money."

For more details:
- see this PwC press release
- take a look at this Reuters story
- download the PwC Healthcast series of reports

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The leadership team at the West Wireless Health Institute is quickly shaping up. Last month, the organization hired its first CEO, Donald Casey. Monday, the La Jolla, Calif.-based not-for-profit named Dr. Joseph Smith its chief medical and science officer.

Like Casey, Smith comes from Johnson & Johnson, where he was vice president for emerging technologies in the pharma giant's Corporate Office of Science and Technology. At West Wireless, Smith will lead medical research and other clinical activities and help design and implement a strategy for global collaboration across the domains of medicine, engineering, technology and business. He also will work closely with WWHI Vice-Chairman and Chief Innovation Officer Dr. Eric J. Topol to help identify research opportunities.

Smith, a cardiologist, holds a master's degree in electrical engineering and a Ph.D. in medical engineering and medical physics, the institute says.

"Joe is known and respected throughout medicine and industry for his ability to identify and help commercialize innovative healthcare technologies, and we are fortunate to add his unparalleled talents to the West Wireless Health Institute leadership," Casey said in a press release. "Joe's blend of talents and vision will help establish WWHI as the preeminent medical research organization in the world focused on wireless health."

For more:
- read this WWHI press release

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We've reported plenty on how various telecommunications companies have been moving into mobile healthcare. Isn't it clear why?

"All telcos face the same challenge: the commoditization of our core business of voice and broadband," Alvaro Fernández de Araoz, director of corporate e-health at Spanish telecom Telefónica, says in a BusinessWeek feature story. "We see wireless health care as a major source of new growth." To many traditional phone companies, mobile health, content and advertising are their three most promising future revenue sources.

BusinessWeek ticks off a list of cellular carriers and other telecoms with plans for mobile healthcare: Verizon, Sprint Nextel, AT&T, France Telecom's Orange, Vodafone, Sweden's Doro and, from Japan, NTT DoCoMo and KDDI. Of note, Vodafone's venture fund two years ago bought a stake in t+Medical, a wireless monitoring technology firm developed at Oxford University. Meantime, the big medical-equipment manufacturers, including GE Healthcare, Siemens and Philips, and tech heavyweights such as Intel are hard at work on wireless sensors, remote patient monitors and the mobile apps to transmit data to and from such devices.

"Wireless companies face a huge challenge because they are up against well-entrenched rivals that have been successfully selling technology in this market for years," Nicholas McQuire, a research director at IDC in London, tells the magazine.

Another barrier, of course, is the current healthcare reimbursement system. Many of the telcos have kicked off clinical trials to help demonstrate the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of their technologies. "The profession wants to see that mobile technology not only works but that it improves patient outcomes and doesn't increase their workload," t+Medical founder Lionel Tarassenko explains.

For more:
- check out this BusinessWeek feature

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The ZigBee Alliance has ratified a new wireless protocol for healthcare and made the standard available to the general public.

The protocol, called ZigBee Health Care, is an open standard for low-power wireless devices intended for low-acuity patient monitoring and management, particularly in disease management, eldercare, inpatient monitoring and asset tracking, the alliance says. The standard, which is compatible with the IEEE 11073 standard for point-of-care medical devices, can support thousands of devices on a single network.

"ZigBee Health Care provides a wide variety of remote and wireless health monitoring services that can inspire everyone to take a more active role in their own wellness and fitness," ZigBee Alliance Chairman Dr. Robert F. Heile says in a statement. "Wireless products based on ZigBee Health Care will enable people to get the care they need without sacrificing their independent lifestyles and mobility."

With wireless monitoring a relatively new field, the ZigBee standard may find itself in competition with a low-energy version of the Bluetooth wireless protocol, however.

For more:
- check out this SlashGear blog post
- see this ZigBee Alliance press release

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Know what a jaffle iron is? We didn't either. It's the Aussie name for what we might call a sandwich press.

What does that have to do with mobile healthcare? Nothing at all, except that's how one story describes a device that is enabling home monitoring and videoconferencing between centralized nurses and elderly and immobile patients spread across metro areas and rural communities. "You could have one registered nurse monitoring maybe 50 or 60 patients in a day using this remote patient monitoring, while they can only do 10 or 15 when they do it face-to-face," home-health nurse Margaret Scott tells Australia's 9 News.

Scott, a Canadian leading a pilot test of Intel Health Guide videoconferencing units in Australia, says the touch-screen devices do not replace a home visit for "hands-on" care such as wound dressing, but offer an alternative to driving all over town simply to check and monitor patient vital signs. "A lot of my nurses travel a hundred kilometers in the course of their community visits in a day," says Scott, "therefore we're making real effective use of the scarce commodity called the registered nurse."

For more information about this pilot and possible future uses of such monitors:
- click through to this 9 News story

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We're not big fans of sites that exist solely for search-engine optimization, but occasionally one will have an interesting blog post that's completely unrelated to the site's domain name. Such is the case with the e-Health News Blog--essentially a front for a listing of medical technologist schools--which has a list of "17 Ways Mobile Computing Is Changing Medicine and Healthcare." The listing breaks down mobile computing into three broad categories: diagnosis and treatment; patient information; and communication. Even we have to admit we learned something new. Blog

> Pfizer is partnering with Sermo, Epocrates and Boston's Brigham & Women's Hospital to track adverse drug events on mobile devices. FiercePharma

> Telemedicine vendor ICUcare has introduced a telemedicine terminal with embedded EMR for retail clinics. Press release

> PayFlex Systems, Omaha, Neb., has launched a platform to provide HSA and FSA customers with mobile access to their accounts. Press release

> Global food conglomerate Nestle is teaming up with an Australian university to embed food allergy information into bar codes and to develop an iPhone app that can read such bar codes. Blog item

And Finally... Be careful who you text. Article