A day before the start of the ATA (American Telemedicine Association) meeting proper, the US Army held its annual Telemedicine Partnership Series, where presenters show some of the really cutting edge things the army (and navy and air force and marines) is working on. The audience seemed to be mainly people in universities and other institutions that already have or hope to get grants to work on such projects.

The fact that the whole day was devoted to “mHealth: The Use of Cell Phones for Healthcare Applications” shows that the mobile health topic is mainstream, at least for the US military. Mobile health is essentially the use of cellphones, feature phones, smart phones, and devices such as the iPod and iPad to deliver healthcare services.

An early presenter noted that telemedical technologies not long ago derided as hype, such as remote specialist assistance to surgeons operating on the battlefield, were now operational. If anything, it is a beleaguered FDA, unable to cope with the tsunami of innovation, that gives many technologies apparent but undeserved hype status, he seemed to suggest.

Besides a strong focus on esoteric areas such as simulation technologies and regenerative medicine, the military also also very much in the forefront when it comes to mundane stuff like smart phones and social networking. There is even a planning and social network for the military. It’s called MilSpace.

Going beyond mere testing on social networks, the military is looking to incorporate sensor technologies such as smart bandages into a WBAN, a wireless body area network. This plus home monitoring represent one of half a dozen key aspects of DoD mHealth strategy.

One speaker described this year as the “inflection year” when smart bandages and smart pills will take off. He pointed to a need to have much more artificial intelligence built into our smart devices. In other words, we need, and can expect to see, smarter phones and other devices. We need it in particular because there is too much data and complexity for the human brain to manage.

Given smarter devices that handle much of the work for us, we need then to be mindful of the need to change the way we work and the way we plan and think about healthcare if we are to get full benefit from these devices.

For instance, mHealth really can supplant the office visit and the need for building expensive facilities.

Several speakers described specific projects sponsored by the military. One is mCare, which sends text messages such as alerts, appointments, and tips to Traumatic brain injurt (TBI) patients. Appointment reminders are texted 24 hours and 90 minutes beforehand. The system can also “pull” responses to questions from the patients, which caregivers can then analyze via a website dashboard showing the patents status and progress status in graphical format.

Another project is an app for tracking pandemics, called Alerta. Project researchers receive automatic emails every time a new case is reported. A website aggregates all of the incoming data and displays the spread of disease in graph form. It also sends out automated reports daily and weekly. Alerta has predicted several outbreaks since it was rolled out in 2007.

Two especially interesting products were shown. One was the AirstripOB iPhone app for obstetricians, already available for the iPhone and iPad, but soon to be joined by a very sophisticated critical care monitoring app. Essentially, it will be an eICU. It is expected to be launched soon.

Second was the CellScope, a device that clips onto an iPhone and turns it into a fluorescence microscope able to detect malaria, TB, and sickle cell, in the field. The system is very inexpensive–hundreds of dollars compared to thousands for traditional fluorescence microscopes.

There was more, but these were the highlights as far as this reporter was concerned.

I’ll be back with another report, on the ATA meeting proper, tomorrow.