What Connected Health can learn from Office Automation
At Howz we use a wide variety of cloud-based office automation services to maximise our productivity.
These apps have an astonishing level of connectedness. For example take Trello which we use to keep track of tasks within out team. Trello offers connectivity via Business Class PowerUps to 12 different cloud based apps.
Zapier connects 60 apps in the CRM category alone
Or take Pipedrive which we use for managing sales prospects and deal flow. We have it connected to our email, marketing and social media campaigns. On the Pipedrive website I have counted 34 integrations to other products many of which overlap both with each other and some core features of Pipedrive itself. One of the 34 is Zapier which exists simply to connect apps together. Zapier lists hundreds of apps in 27 categories from Billing, Accounting and Invoicing to Video. In the CRM section alone there are 60 apps listed. IFTTT does something very similar for the Internet of Things.
The world of digital and mHealth could hardly be more different. According to a report by Deloitte the Global mHealth market is set to be worth $21.5 billion by 2018 and yet the report also says that according to the NHS only a handful of apps bring together information from clinical systems and patient provided information. Our How are you today?, Frailty and End of Life products do this but the reason that so few apps do is simple – up to now it has been too difficult and costly.
Developing Howz has given me a new perspective on this. The principle behind Howz is to bring the Internet of Things to bear on the problem of safe, independent living for the frail elderly population. It looks at someone’s routine of daily activities as evidenced by energy and environmental data in their home and looks for early warning signals that might trigger an intervention.
That intervention might end up with clinical implications but step one will be alerting the family or formal carers. With permission formal carers will have access to Howz but they may use other systems to roster staff, produce daily notes or provide proof of attendance to the family or commissioning body. We can try to build all of these features into Howz ourselves. Alternatively we can open up Howz to communicate with tools from other vendors under the control of our Howz customer at all times.
This is the route we have decided to follow. We want Howz to be the very best at what it does and integrate as widely as possible. In the future we see a page on our website, just like those of Pipedrive, Zapier or IFTTT allowing a customer to connect Howz to any app of his or her choice.
