ABI Research has just come up with a prediction that wearable senors to measure important body parameters and communicate the data to remote systems will grow to 400  million devices by 2014.  They predict that:

"Demand will come from the professional healthcare, home healthcare and sports and fitness markets, but these markets will develop at different speeds and will support different applications. The sports and fitness market represents more than 90 percent of the market today."

You can see the whole article at http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20090723005635&newsLang=en

When you look at the players in this segment you see a healthy mix of big technology companies and small innovators. This provides a stong foundation for segment growth.  The list the major players as: 

Atmel, Bluetooth SIG, Broadcom, Continua Health Alliance, CSR, Cypress Semiconductor, Dynastream Innovations, EM Microelectronic, FitLinxx, GE Healthcare, Healthsense, Inc., Intel, Microchip Technology, Nike, Nokia, Nordic Semiconductor, Philips, Polar Electro, Roche Diagnostics, Sensium, Sony Ericsson, ST Ericsson, Suunto, Texas Instruments, Uniband Electric Corporation
Wireless-Life Sciences Alliance, ZMD.

The question we need to ask ourselves is how do we, as a community of interested professionals (care providers, technologists and vendors) best engage and guide this activity.  Given Australia apears to be embarking on a fresh health IT future it appears a good time to work with these groups to ensure we are early adopters of these technologies, but also to make sure that the sorts of innovations they are driving are incorporated in our design of health IT for Australia.

HealthBeyond is a consumer e-health group with discussions covering areas such as online interactive therapy, online information, health gaming, personal health records, exercise systems and home monitoring.  Most importantly, it looks at how all these systems are beginning to interact to deliver new and innovative health management options.

It is easy to join the discussion, just register for the Health Hub and click on the HealthBeyond group.  I look forward to see you you in the group.

Did you see the press release from Swinburne  University's National eTherapy Centre announcing that they have developed an effective online treatment for PTSD.  Interesting reading, you can find the article at http://www.virtualmedicalcentre.com/news.asp?artid=13921 and the site is at at http://www.swinburne.edu.au/lss/swinpsyche/etherapy/index.html .

The biggest thing to hit consumer e-health in Australia in the last few weeks was yesterday's release of the National Health and Hospital Reform Commission's final report ( you can download the report at http://www.nhhrc.org.au/internet/nhhrc/publishing.nsf/Content/nhhrc-report ).

This report is important because it lays out a plan of how to get to the goal of a consumer focused personal health record that is built on a strong foundation of supporting information systems and processes.  There have been many well intentioned plans to deliver the benefits of e-health broadly out to consumers, but they have often struggled because the underlying information systems were inadequate and not enough funding was allocated to improve them.

The current report is aligned with the AHMAC (Australian Health Ministers Advisory Council) strategy that was developed by Deloitte's.  It recommends significant funding and strong governance process to achieve its goals.  As a result it has been receiving  a high level of support from industry.

There is still a distance to go to get a plan implemented, and the devil certainly will be in the detail, but we now look to be building on a solid foundation.  This bodes well for the future of consumer e-health