LIVE FROM GSMA-mHA MOBILE HEALTH SUMMIT 2012: Mobile operators should start with small, practical moves as they look for partners in the mobile health market, argued Olivier Deuffic, the head of innovation with Saudi operator Mobily, during a keynote discussion on business models and collaboration at today’s Mobile Health Summit.

“I am very pragmatic in my approach. We start on a small scale and then move forward,” said Deuffic, speaking with Mobile Health Live. The operator launched its first mhealth service in Saudi Arabia a few months ago. The text-based advice service is the result of an alliance with the publishing and media division of the Harvard Medical School and value-added services supplier AxeIn.

Mobily is also talking to the country’s private healthcare providers. Partnerships with government, said Deuffic, can suffer from “big expectations”.

He also made the same point earlier in the session that practical solutions can prove to governments the value of mobile health. “That can prove we are moving in the right direction. Big plans can fail because of budget restrictions and short term political views.”

Providers of mobile health can find themselves trapped between offering a service with the kind of gains that offer short-term political traction and creating services that can offer long-running benefits but might cost more to set up immediately.

Participants in the session also debated with the audience whether mobile health can be a global service. While the panel argued that health messages always had to be tailored to local language and culture, some questions from the floor argued in favour of a global approach,

Thierry Zylberberg, EVP Orange and general manager of its healthcare business, responded that Microsoft, Google or Intel had all either closed or sold their (global) healthcare businesses. The Microsoft and Intel businesses had been sold to GE. Although itself a global business, GE does not run its health business as such, said Zylberberg. "Health is national, even regional,” he said.