Discussing health data ownership and analysis with Open mHealth on Twitter

Last night, we were fortunate to have two special guests on our mHealth tweet chat: David Haddad, director, and Mike Varallo, community manager, of Open mHealth.
Open mHealth is a nonprofit organization based in San Francisco that calls for an open architecture model for mHealth. They aim to work together with developers, health providers, and other players in the mHealth sphere to create shared software that they argue will remove barriers to innovation and lead to development of more effective health apps. They have also devised modules for data analysis and standardized clinical measures to provide a stronger evidence base for mHealth.
In an eye-opening and lively chat, we discussed important issues in the mobile health industry today, particularly surrounding data “ownership” and who should control access to patients’ health data both in medical apps and electronic medical records. We also talked about the importance of using data to create evidence-based health apps that truly improve patient care and outcomes, and how Open mHealth can help in the analysis and dissemination of this valuable data.
Specific topics were as follows:

• T1: Who does mobile health data belong to: The patient? Developer? Everyone? As a patient, under what circumstances would you be willing or unwilling to share your data?
• T2: What tools can we use to help disseminate increasing amounts of data generated by medical app usage? What are the benefits? Any concerns?
• T3: How can app developers expedite the advancement of mobile apps? How can open source help? How will it ultimately affect patient care?

Read the archive here.  iMedicalApps would like to thank both David and Mike for their participation and insight.
Please note, there will be no mHealth chat on Wednesday, November 21 due to the thanksgiving holiday, but we will resume chats on Wednesday, December 5.