Doctors as well as insurers are looking at our application because it gives them a disease management focus,” said Ross Wilson, senior clinical manager at iSonea.
Other mHealth asthma solutions are coming to market with the aim of decreasing the numbers of physician and hospital visits through better management of this chronic disease.
There’s certainly demand. Some 14.2 million office visits when asthma is the primary diagnosis occur annually, with 1.3 million patients going to a hospital outpatient department and 1.3 million to an emergency room - and when a hospital admission is required, the average length of stay is an astounding 3.6 days.
What’s more, the annual cost of medical expenses to treat asthma is $48.6 billion, according to the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control, while the cost forl prescription drugs is $6 billion. The number of non-institutionalized adults with asthma is more than 18 million, and there are an additional 6.8 million children, with that population segment seeing the most rapid growth.
Consider it a sign of the times that AsthmaMD, iSonea and Propeller Health all started as business-to-consumer solutions but now see new business-to-business markets opening up as ACOs, healthcare providers and payers begin to realize the benefits of mobile self-management in terms of healthier patients and populations, reduced admissions and cost-savings.
