MEDIC steals the show at growing AppsForHealth
Last week I attended Mohawk College’s 2013 edition of AppsForHealth (@AppsForHealth). This was the third edition of AppsForHealth, a conference that describes itself as,
“AppsForHealth is quickly becoming Ontario’s premier information-sharing, networking and recruiting event for the mHealth and eHealth industries. This interactive, one-day event provides a valuable opportunity for professionals from healthcare, technology and education to come together to discuss current and emerging trends in health and education technology.”
I’ve been to the conference each year, and it’s been really cool to watch it grow. My numbers might be wrong, but if my memory serves me correctly it has grown from about 140 attendees at AppsForHealth 2011, to about 190 at AppsForHealth 2012, to 340 at last week’s 2013 edition. The scope of the conference seems to have grown over time as well, with educational health apps highlighted more specifically this year.
I attended talks and panel discussions during the education stream of the event because that’s my focus. I thought the panel discussion portions were great in particular, though a friend of mine quipped that I should instead “go to the stream that you understand the least to learn the most”. The discussions during the gamification panels were the most interesting to me, specifically the idea of gamification “losing its power to engage” as every mobile app, contest and website integrates game elements as a design technique. Gamification is a bit trendy at the moment, and everyone knows trendy things can suddenly go out of fashion.
The event itself was executed wonderfully, right down to the design of the conference program. One thing I didn’t even realize would be on display at the event was the new Mohawk eHealth Development and Innovation Centre (MEDIC):
MEDIC helps Canadian businesses, especially small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) develop and commercialize innovative healthcare IT products and provides a centre of excellence for organizations undertaking interconnected healthcare projects. Through MEDIC, clients can access a working eHealth ecosystem, including the technology, know-how and industry contacts that are necessary in the development and commercialization of new health IT innovations. As an online “living-lab” environment, MEDIC allows stakeholders to work through a significant part of their development in a cost-effective, secure, efficient manner.
Mohawk researchers and staff were on hand to give a live demo of just what a “working eHealth ecosystem” looks like, and it was far and away my favourite part of the event. The huge display on the back wall of MEDIC displayed a diagram of an eHealth ecosystem that lit up to depict the system’s interactions with mobile devices and coffee table size surface devices.
As with prior years AppsForHealth included a student competition to design solutions to mobile healthcare challenges, and you can see the winners here. You can check out videos made for some of the entries into the student competition portion of AppsForHealth below:
