Mobility Dominates PwC's 2015 Predictions

By Katie Wike, contributing writer

The top three predictions for 2015 in a recent PwC report involve mobile healthcare.

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) has announced its top ten healthcare trends of 2015, and the top three are all mobile. In a webinar, Ceci Connolly, Leader of PwC’s Health Research Institute, explained the top trend for this year is what they call “DIY Healthcare.”

“For the first time really we’re discovering physicians are expressing much more openness and willingness to consider information about their patients coming from DIY devices,” Connolly said during the webinar.

MobiHealth News reports DIY Healthcare includes devices and apps that can monitor vital signs, analyze blood and urine, and track medication adherence. This is expected to be a major trend based on consumer eagerness and physicians’ willingness to use the data collected by these devices.

Second on the list was the idea that mobile apps and devices will continue to fight whether or not they need to be regulated by the FDA.

“In some instances, regulatory approval could provide the competitive edge to certain players entering into this market, especially as you think about how crowded this market is getting,” Connolly said. “On the other hand, going through a regulatory process might slow down the innovation of products as they iterate and go through version one, two, three, four.”

PwC also predicts that, in 2015, convenience and privacy will be a tricky balance. In a survey, PwC found that when it came to medical records, privacy was more important than convenience for most patients. However when it came to diet and exercise information (like that collected by apps) convenience won out over privacy.