Over 3,600 officials spanning government, industry, and academia are gathered at the third annual mHealth Summit just outside Washington, DC, this week, “to advance collaboration in the use of wireless technology to improve health outcomes in the U.S. and abroad.”
Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius kicked off the conference on Monday morning, emphasizing the game-changing aspects of mobile health technology to improve clinical outcomes, promote preventative medicine, and reduce wasteful spending and healthcare costs. Sebelius noted that mobile healthcare technology is gaining added significance — and issued a call to arms to support innovation in mobile medical devices.
“This is an incredible time to be having this conversation,” she said. “[The federal government] can play a critical role as a catalyst.”
And timed to coincide with the mHealth Summit, two NIH officials – Wendy Nilsen, a Health Science Administrator in the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR), and William Riley, a Program Director at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute – are out with an article describing NIH’s efforts in mHealth (after the jump):
» Read more: NIH: “Looking at the Potential of mHealth to Solve Long-standing Problems”
Similarly, Americans’ increasing dependence on technology, ranging from constant computer use to around-the-clock interaction with mobile phones, has prompted many observers and academics to question whether the line separating people and technology is blurring in an all too dangerous manner.
![SC11 conference - Seattle, WA - Connecting communities through HPC [image courtesy SC].](http://www.cccblog.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/SC11Logo.jpeg "SC11 conference - Seattle, WA - Connecting communities through HPC [image courtesy SC].")
