mHealth-As-A-Service Could Change Mobile Health

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) when it comes to cloud computing is often talked about, but what about mobile healthcare-as-a-service (mHaaS)? In a recent article, written by John Sung Kim, CEO of San Francisco based DoctorBase.com and published in PhysBizTech, the case is made that mHealth apps for medical provider organizations will soon evolve into app platforms whose functions can be ‘rented’ as a cloud-based service instead of building them as ‘one-off’ IT projects. Sung Kim goes on to say that mHaaS is the only way the mHealth industry will grow.

Sung Kim, who runs a mobile healthcare 2.0 company, believes the benefit of mHaaS is that it significantly decreases the costs and risks for medical provider organizations.

“Singularly built medical apps may suffice for certain tools such as drug reference information, but apps such as patient communications or mobile medical consultations require systems built on a multi-tenant architecture with the capability to scale and become extensible by third parties through application programming interfaces,” says Sung Kim, adding that “mHaaS is not only coming - it's the only viable way our industry will grow.”

Sung Kim says that mHaaS is an obvious pathway for mHealth provision. All one has to do is look at the cost and pricing structure of mHaaS versus building them internally as standalone apps, he says. He estimates the total first year cost to provider organizations for in-house or outsourced application development for a single app to be $181,000, while the total first year cost with mHaaS falls significantly to $18,000 ($1,500 per month in subscription fees to access and deploy a cloud-based mHealth app as a rented service with 1,000 customers on its mHaaS platform).

“In the current landscape of mHealth applications launched by medical provider organizations, there is much anecdotal evidence that suggests most of these initiatives fail to achieve their originally stated performance and cost objectives,” Sung Kim concludes. “Fortunately, the money and math add up quite nicely for those who can execute on the approaching mHaaS future.”