Boosting digital health innovation in Norway - an introductory guide
With Snowden’s NSA revelations, it has become clear that drastic steps need to be taking to safe guard patient health data. The Norwegian government was foresighted when it established The Norwegian Health Network (NHN), through which all electronic healthcare messages are conveyed. NHN’s main focus has been security. This has resulted in a monopolized network, which is difficult and expensive to connect to. Innovation is stymied and limited to a small number of companies. Because of the rigidity of NHN, the system’s culture implicitly hampers innovation. Once companies have been certified by NHN, they use lock-in mechanisms to bind their customers to expensive subscription models. The status-quo becomes profitable, and must be maintained. A more open system will increase competition, and enable independent developers to break into the market. In order to disrupt this status-quo, these developers will need to bring their A-game. In turn, healthcare providers and patients will profit.
The government should continue to focus on developing the critical back-end systems. At the same time, they should adopt the strategies of large technology firms such as Apple, Google, and Microsoft, to sway independent apps and software developers to the platform. Strategies could include, but not be limited to:
- Continuous innovation
- Short update cycles
- Adaptive guidelines
- Dialog with developers
- App Stores or Libraries
APIs
Developing APIs which ease integrating healthcare data and advanced functionalities into apps is a must. This has proven to be a viable strategy for software companies wishing to expand their market reach, empower users, and improve their user experience. In many cases, combining several APIs can result in synergistic effects, such as the If This Then That platform. Governments alone can collect massive amounts of data, but the endeavor becomes meaningless if citizens have no easy way to access the data.
Certified apps
In spite of thousands of available health related smartphone apps, users really do not have any way of knowing whether a given app is medically safe or useful. The FDA is developing regulations for smartphone apps, but the European Union is straggling. The NHS of UK has taken it upon themselves to curate a medical app library. Apps are reviewed in order to ensure that they:
- Are relevant to people living in England
- Use information from a verifiable or a trusted source
- Comply with the Data Protection Act, to make sure that they hold and use your information appropriately
- Are not potentially harmful
The idea is brilliant, albeit the implementation is subpar. With an improved design, better highlighting of apps, better search, and a higher level of user engagement Certified App Libraries could drive medical app adoption and help increase the revenue of independent developers. This could be the enticement independent developers need to finally disrupt healthcare IT.