It also examines the market challenges that sensor technology faces including legal, regulatory, political, and cultural hurdles.

The report notes that while the vast majority of mHealth apps are designed for consumer use, 15% of the are meant for health care professionals including CME (Continuing Medical Education), remote monitoring, and health care management apps.

Forty-two percent of the mHealth apps available in the major app stores currently have a cost associated with them. But the report authors predict that in the next five years 84% of mHealth revenue come from related services and products such as sensors.

The Q and Me app, which is available through the iTunes and the Google Play Store, is not a “prescribable app” and works as a stand-alone app for anyone interested in improving their fitness or nutrition. But it is also part of a patient support program for people taking VIVUS’s obesity drug Qsymia.

We’ve seen large drug companies such as Johnson & Johnson and Sanofi investing in mHealth tools to improve patient compliance on a pilot basis. Now we have a product-specific app coming from a relatively small biotech company that has the aim of helping patients better manage chronic conditions.

Verizon

Medical records have been notoriously stuck in analog mode, and most health data is still transferred between providers by mail or by fax. This is largely due to the fact that medical facilities use legacy IT systems that never envisioned the need to communicate with each other. Another obstacle is the requirement under HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) that patient privacy be protected.

The Verizon offering, dubbed Secure Universal Messaging Services or SUMS, avoids these pitfalls by focusing on sending data rather than storing it. Health care providers receive an SMS message via phone or email when they receive a message through SUMS. Then they access the message through a browser-based service. Read more here.

uChek analyzes urine samples for the presence of up to 10 markers that can help users understand and manage diseases like diabetes, UTIs, and pre-eclampsia. It uses conventional dipsticks and a color mat. The app optimizes color matching through photos taken by the camera on an iPhone 4, 4s or 5.

While the uChek website boasts that the product can cut down on doctor visits, it also notes that “it is not intended to be used for the diagnosis or disease or other conditions.” While there is probably only a limited market of people who want to analyze their urine for entertainment purposes only, the uChek demonstrates the potential for mHealth apps to analyze fluids as the quality of smartphone cameras improves.

Sixty percent of the survey participants indicated that they use email, and over half (54%) said they use the Internet. Additionally, 19% said they already use email to communicate informally with their health care provider.

The study, which was conducted by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, concluded that patients using “safety net” health care clinics are interested eHealth tools, but the facilities currently lack the technology to provide patient portals or secure messaging.

The first is interoperability, that is, the ability of an app or device or platform to exchange data with other systems in a common format using common protocols. While health related apps range in complexity from text message reminders to sending microscopy images to your doctor, they all need to be able to connect with an electronic health record.

The second is open standards, which relates closely to interoperability. Currently multiple standards exist for health care data, but even those created by nonprofit organizations are “closed.” The article suggests that a governing body such as the World Health Organization certify open standards.

 The third is evaluation. As we reported earlier this year a meta study showed that the majority of trials on the effectiveness of mHealth apps and programs have been of poor quality. A rigorous and consistent scheme for evaluating mobile health initiatives is needed.

Of course, a phone call only barely qualifies as mHealth. But it brought to mind the way that the term “mHealth” is coming to be used for everything related to the shift of health care delivery out of the clinic and into other venues such as the home, the workplace or the supermarket as Jordan Kramer of Kaiser Permanente Ventures said at the Burrill Digital Health conference – where, for the record, I caught the cold.

Also at the Burrill conference, Matthew Holt, founder of Health 2.0 and mHealth guru, made a point of saying that he now has foresworn the term mHealth as being too cellphone specific. He said he is lobbying for the term “unplatformed health” but acknowledges that everyone else thinks it’s a terrible phrase.

He has an important point – particularly to someone who named a publication Mobile Health Market News less than a year ago. Mobile Health is hardly an adequate term for the converging forces that are transforming health care delivery, but it is a phrase that has gained traction in the public’s imagination.

Sometimes the lexicon doesn’t keep up with technology. A hundred years ago, typists were called “typewriters,” as devotees of Downton Abbey will recall. But words don’t have values in and of themselves. The essence of a term is whatever we ascribe to it. When I grew up, an apple was a fruit. Now it’s a stylish piece of hardware. (Not to mention, when I grew up, a piece of hardware was what my father had in the tool chest.)

So what is mHealth? Today it is the intersection of cheap technology (primarily sensors and bandwidth), the shift to pay-for-performance in health care (as opposed to fee-for-service), and the explosion of health care data (that makes it increasingly overwhelming to both patients and clinician without sophisticated analytic tools).

But a year from now, odds are the term mHealth will have further evolved. And eventually, the concept of health care anywhere, anytime, health care that is seamlessly integrated into our lives, will simply be called “health care.”

“The vast sea of mobile health apps—over 40,000 across all platforms—can be overwhelming,” said Ben Chodor, CEO of Happtique. “Healthcare professionals and consumers need third-party certification to verify that the app they are prescribing or downloading delivers credible content, contains safeguards for user data, and functions as described.”

The publication of the Happtique standards is a welcome development at a time when more and more concerns are being raised about the value of mHealth apps.