The configuration of the mobile health industry, offer to pharmaceutical companies many opportunities and challenges. We can identify three main challenges: 1. The first one is to win the trust of patients Pharma companies are fighting an uphill battle in many ways. One is that, as technologies like mobile devices bring healthcare into patients’ homes, patient trust becomes more important than ever. And pharmaceutical companies generally aren’t as trusted as physicians or even insurers.

1. PATEGOU JOSEPH, International Strategy And Influence
mHealth market: the future challenges
The configuration of the mobile health industry, offer to pharmaceutical companies many
opportunities and challenges.
We can identify three main challenges:
1. The first one is to win the trust of patients
Pharma companies are fighting an uphill battle in many ways. One is that, as
technologies like mobile devices bring healthcare into patients’ homes, patient trust
becomes more important than ever. And pharmaceutical companies generally aren’t as
trusted as physicians or even insurers.
A Deloitte survey last year found that although people trust doctors and academic
centers most, the next most trusted entities are companies like WebMD, then Google search
results. At the bottom of the list are pharma and payor companies.
A more recent study, by Makovsky Health, found that only around 35 percent of
consumers would trust a disease website sponsored by a pharmaceutical company, and 16
percent said they would never visit a disease website sponsored by a pharma company.
2. The second one is the ability to take risk
Pharma companies is historically extremely risk-averse, when you introduce a new
factor, it inherently increases risk. In a business that is focused on reducing risk, then those
are things that life sciences companies are going to stay away from. In the business of
mobile health will always need to take risk to be the best.
3. The last challenge will be its ability to produce relevant apps for patients, for that,
they need to develop a customer culture.
Figure 1: Main challenges