• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, October 11, 2011

Most mobile ad networks to date have been formed to help marketers that are reaching a wide swath of mobile users encompassing different demographics, geographic and behavioral factors. A newly formed mobile ad network bypasses broad reach to focus on reaching professionals in the healthcare industry.

Tomorrow Networks promises to let developers market and distribute their health-related applications to members of the medical community seeking mobile tools to improve the quality and efficiency of healthcare. Created by Physicians Interactive Holdings, a health information provider, and Remedy Systems, a mobile app developer, the platform would also allow health marketers to deliver targeted advertising.

“Healthcare app developers are no different than other app developers -– we’re both looking for ways to distribute our applications to an audience that is most likely to download and use them,” said Matt Wiggins, CEO of Remedy Systems, in a statement. While typical mobile ad networks boast of reaching an audience of tens of millions, Tomorrow Networks is geared to reach 275,000 healthcare professionals.

Within that population, advertisers can further target messages by location and different positions, including physician, nurse, practitioner, physicians' assistant, medical student, and by practice specialty. An ad on Tomorrow Networks for a diabetes treatment, for example, might be shown to a physician using a glucose measuring application while treating a diabetes patient. From the patient’s perspective, however, do you really want your doctor distracted by an ad at the same time you’re being treated? 

Overall, the companies behind Tomorrow Networks say they want to take the guesswork out of the health advertising model for developers, marketers and the healthcare industry. “We’re committed to ensuring that the advertising content distributed via these apps is truly useful to the end user who is directly serving the patient,” said Sanjay Pringle, president of Physicians Interactive. 

To illustrate the relevance of medical apps, the announcement pointed to recent research by Aptilon Corp. indicating that by the end of 2011, 61% of doctors would be using an iPhone. At launch, more than 50 applications had joined Tomorrow Networks. Developers can apply for an SDK (software development kit) to gain access to the platform.