comScore reports that the number of mobile users accessing health information from mobile devices more than doubled over the past year. During the 3 month period from Sep 2011 to Nov 2011, there were 16.9 million mobile health information users. comScore also reports that 60% of the users were under age 35. Unfortunately, the post doesn't say anything about the type of information accessed.

It's good to see health technology playing a bigger and bigger role at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. However, you can tell this is an emerging market because most of the attention is focused on business opportunities rather than consumer solutions.

Dan Munro reports on CES at Forbes. Though he mentions personal health care products and services on display by Zeo, Fitbit, Qualcomm (sponsor of the "Tricorder X Prize" contest), the Continua Health Alliance, and Carnegie Mellon University, he's most excited about Life Technologies' Ion Proton Genetic Sequencer that, it is claimed, can sequence an entire human genome for around $1,000.

UnitedHealth Group, a major health insurance company, not only participated in CES, they created a special website for their CES presence. But is this because they are excited about the emerging opportunities or worried that private insurance will be driven out of the market by proponents of "single payer" (i.e., zero choice, zero competition) health care?

CES also featured the Digital Health Summit, a conference for "developers, manufacturers, distributors and service providers." Sessions included "Data Liberation: Making Health Data Intelligible for the Consumer" and "Is Technology Changing the Doctor-Patient Relationship?" Again, the agenda suggests an industry that is in search of a market breakthrough.

Personal health technology isn't going to take off until we free consumers to act as self-directed buyers of health care products and services and free the health care industry to compete for those buyers. Unfortunately, we are moving rapidly in the exact opposite direction.

I recently wrote an article for the Commonwealth Secretariat's magazine, Global Briefing. The article identifies four areas in which technology can drive down the cost of health care--provided we let it:

Everyone wants the best medical care that money can buy. Diagnostic imaging systems let doctors peer inside the body – often detecting health problems in their earliest, most treatable, stages. Implantable pacemakers and defibrillators restore the heart’s proper rhythm. Cochlear implants help many people hear, and retinal implants are just a matter of time. But the best medical care that money can buy involves some costly technology.

In fact, sophisticated medical equipment is widely seen as one of the chief reasons that today’s health care is so expensive. While consumers want access to the latest advances, critics say we have become too dependent on expensive technology and that people in wealthy nations are over-diagnosed and over-treated. Given the high cost of medical technology, a number of policy-makers have concluded that we should ration access to the most aggressive treatments.

But exactly why is medical technology so expensive? There are several reasons. Patients insist that the health care industry performs flawlessly, so we subject new medical systems and devices to a phalanx of certifications, regulations and clinical trials – all of which add cost. But the main reason is that the industry has been so busy integrating computers and communications into medical products that the technology is only now beginning to stabilise and mature.

Developments in four key areas will drive down the cost of health care: high-end medical systems are being equipped with productivity-enhancing features; remote solutions that let specialists apply their skills at a distance are being deployed; mobile solutions that enable physicians to save time and money are coming to market; and personal health technology that helps consumers stay healthy and manage chronic medical conditions is starting to take off.

You can read the entire article here.

There was a highly misleading article by David B. Agus, a professor at the University of Southern California, in this weekend's edition of the Wall Street Journal. A Doctor in Your Pocket suggests that "tiny health monitors" and "tailored therapies" will lead to a future in which people will live disease-free lives up to age 100 or older. Agus exaggerates personal health technology's near-term potential to promote a greater role for government in health care.

Agus claims that with enough information we can either prevent diseases or catch them early enough to nip them in the bud. I agree that the more we know about diseases the better equipped we will be to prevent them or at least catch them during the earliest, most treatable stages. I also believe that new technologies will enable us to gather and analyze much more health data than was previously practical. But we are a very long way from being able to prevent most diseases and cure those that can't be prevented. Agus admits as much when he acknowledges that his strategy will only work up to about age 100. What he doesn't acknowledge is that people begin aging much earlier.

The point of the article seems to be that we must let government gather and use all available health data. Agus complains that privacy concerns are getting in the way: "...we can't expect the health care industry to continue to innovate and grow if we continue to hoard health information." Since Medicare pays over half of our country's medical bills, Agus reasons, then letting Medicare harvest and analyze its patients' data would enable Medicare to improve public health.

Agus argues that if we knew more about the body then we could put more emphasis on preventive medicine as opposed to diagnostic medicine. That's a popular view among people who want to see more government involvement in health care, but it assumes that most if not all diseases can be prevented. Agus also says he is a "big proponent" of genetic profiling for consumers, but as I discussed here these services offer most people little more than entertainment.

It's what Agus doesn't say that really worries me. Surely he knows that people don't always choose the healthiest alternative even when presented with ample information. In a free society, individuals have the right to eat and drink what they want, exercise or not exercise as they prefer, and make other tradeoffs that involve health risks. And there are, contrary to Agus, legitimate reasons for keeping private health data private.

Worse, Agus seems unaware that most health care innovation comes from private individuals and companies--not government. His vision of bringing all health databases together in a "centralized network" could actually discourage innovation.