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Podcast: mHealth Alliance Executive Director Patty Mechael

Patricia Mechael is the newly installed executive director of the mHealth Alliance, a joint effort of the United Nations Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Vodafone Foundation. The mHealth Alliance this week is joining with the Foundation of the National Institutes of Health to put on the third annual mHealth Summit in National Harbor, Md.

I first met Patty in 2008, at the mobile health week of the Rockefeller Foundation’s Making the eHealth Connection conferences in bucolic Bellagio, Italy, when she was m-health advisor to the Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York, a post she continues to hold. I was impressed by her international credentials in applying mobility to public health.

She was chosen in September to lead the mHealth Alliance, and joined just a few weeks ago. I interviewed her by phone last week in anticipation of the mHealth Summit. This is the result. (I’ll have a companion piece in MobiHealthNews in the next day or two.)

Podcast details: Interview with Patricia Mechael, executive director of mHealth Alliance. Recorded Dec. 1, 2011. MP3, mono, 64 kbps, 5.1 MB. Running time 11:05
0:40 Roots in Bellagio meetings
1:30 mHealth Summit
2:05 Vision for mHealth Alliance and mHealth Summit
3:50 Legacy of Bellagio
4:45 Global reach of mobile phones
6:45 Multiple communication channels to account for literacy differences
7:25 Smartphones in global health
8:20 Separating hype from reality in low-resource environments

December 5, 2011 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality fast $5000 loans-cash.net with bad credit, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.

Fall speaking engagements

My fledgling speaking career—one that seems to be finding me rather than me pursuing it—is getting a big boost this fall.

Next week, I’m part of the opening keynote session at the mHealth Initiative‘s 2nd International mHealth Networking Conference in San Diego.

On Thursday, Sept. 16, it looks like I will be moderating a roundtable on mobile patient management at the half-day Mobile Healthcare and Medicine Symposia in Toronto, as part of Mobile Innovation Week in that fantastic Canadian city.

I’ll be headed to Las Vegas in mid-October to moderate three sessions at the Mobile Health Expo 2010:

  • “The Real Time Healthcare Enterprise,” Oct. 19, 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. PDT
  • “Carrier or Wired Connectivity as the Backhaul From a Central Aggregator? Wireless Architectures and Industry Alignments for Approaches to Establishing Successful, Interactive Healthcare Monitoring,” Oct. 21, 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
  • “Mobile Payments and Health Information Exchange at the Point of Care Using Multi-Modal Mobile Apps to Engage Patients for Healthcare Providers,” Oct. 21, 1:30 – 2:30 p.m.

Also, FierceMobileHealthcare is planning some kind of event around the mHealth Summit in Washington, D.C., Nov. 8-10. As editor of that publication, I expect to play a role in the event, which will be separate from the actual conference that the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health is putting on. Stay tuned for details.

I hope to see you at one or more of these events.

I’ve also, finally, updated the list of upcoming health IT-related conferences that you see in the right-hand column of this page. This should take you all the way through HIMSS next February.

Oh, if you were wondering what I think of the term “mHealth” (with a forced capital H), read my column in this week’s FierceMobileHealthcare.

September 2, 2010 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality fast $5000 loans-cash.net with bad credit, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.