Hewlett-Packard Company (HPQ) recently announced that it will launch an advanced mobile health monitoring technology in collaboration with a nonprofit organization called Positive Innovation for the Next Generation (PING). The collaboration shows HP’s strategy to make charitable donations, in terms of technology instead of money.
The collaborative effort will help in identifying malaria outbreaks in Africa through HP’s webOS-based Pre 2 smartphones and cloud computing technology. HP’s offerings will help PING health workers to collect data from the malaria-prone zone and store it in a large database for visual monitoring. The information will then help officials and doctors predict malaria breakouts and deter the consequential harm caused.
Malaria is one of the most widespread infectious diseases, taking almost one million lives a year, mostly in Africa and under the age of 5, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). The disease is not only a major killer in Africa but also a primary cause of poverty. As predicted by WHO in 2009, as much as 10% of the African population is under the threat of malaria.
The endeavour by HP is expected to put a check on the epidemic and its fateful effects.
After serving the traditional PC and printer arena for years, HP is now targeting the mobile health monitoring market, which we believe holds immense potential.
Mobile health monitoring is the use of information technology and mobile telecommunications to monitor patients remotely, and is of immense importance to governments and healthcare organizations reduce costs related to chronic diseases. The mobility aspect is crucial as mobile network coverage is much more flexible and hence the mobile health monitoring is being preferred in the majority of developing countries. Currently, mobile health monitoring is at an early stage of market maturity and implementation, and project rollouts have so far been limited to pilot projects.
HP is also on its way to introduce mobile technology for heart patients, a process that is still under trial in Singapore.
We remain encouraged by the recent Halo sell-off as well as HP’s go-to-market strategy for its webOS platform. However, we prefer to remain on the sidelines considering the lowered revenue outlook, which reflects moderate demand for desktop PCs, manufacturing problems in Japan and growing interest in tablets, where HP is still a small player. Stiff competition from Dell Inc. (DELL) and Apple Inc. (AAPL) are concerns too.
Currently, HP has a Zacks #4 Rank, which translates into a short-term Sell recommendation.
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