Ruder Finn has created a new healthcare technology division in response to an upsurge in the mobile health (mHealth) market.
The initiative, which will initially involve a London-based team of four led by the agency’s head of corporate and technology Emma Sinden, will offer services including stakeholder mapping, campaign development and product launches.
The mHealth market is expected to reach $1.3bn in 2012, according to mobile market research firm Research2Guidance, as a result of an estimated 247m users downloading health-related applications worldwide.
Currently mHealth apps generally fall into three categories: those that provide health management, those that provide management of a particular condition and those that provide lifestyle tracking.
Ruder Finn’s own 2012 mHealth Report, which includes YouGov research of more than 1,000 smartphone users, found that a fifth of people were likely to use an mHealth app and that 42 per cent were interested in an app that allowed them to make appointments with their GP.
“Over the next six years the mHealth market is expected to grow 40 per cent year-on-year and 80 per cent of that growth will be in software and services, rather than the actual devices,” explained Sinden.
“It’s an interesting market and one that involves a number of different stakeholders – such as mobile providers and technology developers – who may not be familiar with the highly regulated healthcare landscape.
“So a lot of companies coming into this space will need communications experts who understand the regulatory system but also understand what consumers are actually after. Ruder Finn is in a really quite unique position, because we have the technical experience and we have the health and consumer health experience,” she said.
