scholarly journals Using Mobile Apps for Health Management: A New Health Care Mode in China (Preprint)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qing Lv ◽  
Yutong Jiang ◽  
Jun Qi ◽  
Yanli Zhang ◽  
Xi Zhang ◽  
...  

BACKGROUND China has a large population; however, medical resources are unevenly distributed and extremely limited, and more medical services are needed. With the development and ever-increasing popularity of mobile internet communication, China has created a mode of mobile health (mHealth) care to resolve this problem. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was (1) to describe the problems associated with China’s medical care practice, (2) explore the need for and the feasibility of internet-based medical care in China, and (3) analyze the functionality of and services offered by internet-based health care platforms for the management of chronic diseases. METHODS Data search was performed by searching national websites, the popular search engine Baidu, the App Store, and websites of internet medical care institutions, using search terms like “mobile health,” “Internet health,” “mobile medical,” “Internet medical,” “digital medical,” “digital health,” and “online doctor.” A total of 6 mobile apps and websites with the biggest enrollment targeting doctors and end users with chronic diseases in China were selected. RESULTS We recognized the limitations of medical and health care providers and unequal distribution of medical resources in China. An mHealth care platform is a novel and efficient way for doctors and patients to follow up and manage chronic diseases. Services offered by these platforms include reservation and payment, medical consultation, medical education assessment, pharmaceutical and medical instruments sales, electronic medical records, and chronic disease management. China’s health policies are now strongly promoting the implementation of mHealth solutions, particularly in response to the increasing burden of chronic diseases and aging in the population. CONCLUSIONS China's internet-based medical and health care mode can benefit the populace by providing people with high-quality medical resources. This can help other countries and regions with high population density and unevenly distributed medical resources manage their health care concerns.

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 58
Author(s):  
Muneerah Lbugami ◽  
Usamah El Alem

Patient autonomy is one of the most important ethical values in the health care practice. Patients’ autonomy means the right of patients to make decisions about their medical care without their health care provider trying to influence the decision. Patients’ autonomy allows health care providers to educate the patients but do not allow them to make the decision for the patients.  


2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (5) ◽  
pp. 276-284
Author(s):  
William J. Jefferson

The United States Supreme Court declared in 1976 that deliberate indifference to the serious medical needs of prisoners constitutes the unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain…proscribed by the Eighth Amendment. It matters not whether the indifference is manifested by prison doctors in their response to the prisoner’s needs or by prison guards intentionally denying or delaying access to medical care or intentionally interfering with treatment once prescribed—adequate prisoner medical care is required by the United States Constitution. My incarceration for four years at the Oakdale Satellite Prison Camp, a chronic health care level camp, gives me the perspective to challenge the generally promoted claim of the Bureau of Federal Prisons that it provides decent medical care by competent and caring medical practitioners to chronically unhealthy elderly prisoners. The same observation, to a slightly lesser extent, could be made with respect to deficiencies in the delivery of health care to prisoners of all ages, as it is all significantly deficient in access, competencies, courtesies and treatments extended by prison health care providers at every level of care, without regard to age. However, the frailer the prisoner, the more dangerous these health care deficiencies are to his health and, therefore, I believe, warrant separate attention. This paper uses first-hand experiences of elderly prisoners to dismantle the tale that prisoner healthcare meets constitutional standards.


2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (10) ◽  
pp. 531-538 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vinita Singh ◽  
Ali J. Zarrabi ◽  
Kimberly A. Curseen ◽  
Roman Sniecinski ◽  
Justine W. Welsh ◽  
...  

PURPOSE: Several states, particularly in the Southeast, have restrictive medical marijuana laws that permit qualified patients to use specific cannabis products. The majority of these states, however, do not provide avenues for accessing cannabis products such as in-state dispensaries. METHODS: We conducted a survey of patients registered for medical marijuana (low tetrahydrocannabinol [THC] oil cards) in an ambulatory palliative care practice in Georgia (one of the states with restrictive medical marijuana laws). RESULTS: We had a total of 101 responses. Among our sample of patients who use cannabis as part of a state-approved low THC oil program, 56% were male and 64% were older than age 50 years. Advanced cancer was the most common reason (76%) for granting the patients access to a low THC oil card. Although patients reported cannabis products as being extremely helpful for reducing pain, they expressed considerable concerns about the legality issues (64%) and ability to obtain THC (68%). Several respondents were using unapproved formulations of cannabis products. For 48% of the patients, their physician was the source of information regarding marijuana-related products. Furthermore, they believed that their health care providers and family members were supportive of their use of cannabis (62% and 79%, respectively). CONCLUSION: Patients on Georgia’s medical marijuana program are most concerned about the legality of the product and their ability to obtain marijuana-related products. Therefore, we recommend that states with medical marijuana laws should provide safe and reliable access to cannabis products for qualifying patients.


Author(s):  
Sheeba Marwah ◽  
Pratima Mittal

This article reviews significance, potential and principles to consider when setting up a telemedicine (TM) program to provide care to women in the field of obstetrics and gynecology, essentially deploying mobile technology. There are various benefits of such TM clinical applications. The consensus among patients and health care providers is that this technology is convenient to provide needed subspecialty medical care, even when it is not available locally. Such innovations are clinically successful, but economic and cost-effectiveness data are lacking.


10.2196/18513 ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (12) ◽  
pp. e18513
Author(s):  
Alejandro Plaza Roncero ◽  
Gonçalo Marques ◽  
Beatriz Sainz-De-Abajo ◽  
Francisco Martín-Rodríguez ◽  
Carlos del Pozo Vegas ◽  
...  

Background Mobile health apps are used to improve the quality of health care. These apps are changing the current scenario in health care, and their numbers are increasing. Objective We wanted to perform an analysis of the current status of mobile health technologies and apps for medical emergencies. We aimed to synthesize the existing body of knowledge to provide relevant insights for this topic. Moreover, we wanted to identify common threads and gaps to support new challenging, interesting, and relevant research directions. Methods We reviewed the main relevant papers and apps available in the literature. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) methodology was used in this review. The search criteria were adopted using systematic methods to select papers and apps. On one hand, a bibliographic review was carried out in different search databases to collect papers related to each application in the health emergency field using defined criteria. On the other hand, a review of mobile apps in two virtual storage platforms (Google Play Store and Apple App Store) was carried out. The Google Play Store and Apple App Store are related to the Android and iOS operating systems, respectively. Results In the literature review, 28 papers in the field of medical emergency were included. These studies were collected and selected according to established criteria. Moreover, we proposed a taxonomy using six groups of applications. In total, 324 mobile apps were found, with 192 identified in the Google Play Store and 132 identified in the Apple App Store. Conclusions We found that all apps in the Google Play Store were free, and 73 apps in the Apple App Store were paid, with the price ranging from US $0.89 to US $5.99. Moreover, 39% (11/28) of the included studies were related to warning systems for emergency services and 21% (6/28) were associated with disaster management apps.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raghid El-Yafouri ◽  
Leslie Klieb ◽  
Valérie Sabatier

Abstract Background: Wide adoption of electronic medical records (EMR) systems in the United States can lead to better quality medical care at a lower cost. Despite the laws and financial subsidies by the U.S. government for service providers and suppliers, the adoption has been slow. Understanding the EMR adoption drivers for physicians and the role of policymaking can translate into increased adoption rate and enhanced information sharing between medical care providers. Methods: Physicians across the United States were surveyed to gather primary data on their psychological, social, and technical perceptions toward EMR systems. This quantitative study builds on the Theory of Planned Behavior, the Technology Acceptance Model, and the Diffusion of Innovation theory to propose, test, and validate an innovation adoption model for the health care industry. 382 responses were collected and data were analyzed via linear regression to uncover the effects of 12 variables on the intention to adopt EMR systems.Results: Regression model testing uncovers that government policymaking or mandates and other social factors have little or negligible effect on physicians’ intention to adopt an innovation. Rather, physicians are directly driven by their attitudes and ability to control, and indirectly motivated by their knowledge of the innovation, the financial ability to acquire the system, the holistic benefits to their industry, and the relative advancement of the system compared to others.Conclusions: A unidirectional mandate from the government is not sufficient for physicians to adopt an innovation. Government, health care associations, and EMR system vendors can benefit from our findings by working toward increasing the physicians’ knowledge of the proposed innovation, socializing how medical care providers and the overall industry can benefit from EMR system adoption, and solving for the financial burden of system implementation and sustainment.


Author(s):  
Pannel Chindalo ◽  
Arsalan Karim ◽  
Ronak Brahmbhatt ◽  
Nishita Saha ◽  
Karim Keshavjee

The mobile health (mhealth) app market continues to grow rapidly. However, with the exception of fitness apps and a few isolated cases, most mhealth apps have not gained traction. The barriers preventing patients and care providers from using these apps include: for patients, information that contradicts health care provider advice, manual data entry procedures and poor fit with their treatment plan; for providers, distrust in unknown apps, lack of congruence with workflow, inability to integrate app data into their medical record system and challenges to analyze and visualize information effectively. In this article, the authors build upon previous work to define design requirements for quality mhealth apps and a framework for patient engagement to propose a new reference architecture for the next generation of healthcare mobile apps that increase the likelihood of being useful for and used by patients and health care providers alike.


Author(s):  
Robert G. Evans ◽  
Morris L. Barer ◽  
Greg L. Stoddart

ABSTRACTCalls for user fees in Canadian health care go back as far as the debate leading up to the establishment of Canada's national hospital insurance program in the late 1950s. Although the rationales have shifted around somewhat, some of the more consistent claims have been that user fees are necessary as a source of additional revenue for a badly underfunded system, that they are necessary to control runaway health care costs, and that they will deter unnecessary use (read abuse) of the system. But the real reasons that user fees have been such hardy survivors of the health policy wars, bear little relation to the claims commonly made for them. Their introduction in the financing of hospital or medical care in Canada would be to the benefit of a number of groups, and not just those one usually thinks of. We show that those who are healthy, and wealthy, would join health care providers (and possibly insurers) as net beneficiaries of a reintroduction of user fees for hospital and medical care in Canada. The flip side of this is that those who are indigent and ill will bear the brunt of the redistribution (for that is really what user fees are all about), and seniors feature prominently in those latter groups. Claims of other positive effects of user fees, such as reducing total health care costs, or improving appropriateness or accessibility, simply do not stand up in the face of the available evidence. In the final analysis, therefore, whether one is for or against user fees reduces to whether one is for or against the resulting income redistribution.


2018 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rinat Nissim ◽  
Carmine Malfitano ◽  
Mark Coleman ◽  
Gary Rodin ◽  
Mary Elliott

The well-being of health care providers may be challenged by their work, with evidence that oncology health care providers are a high-risk group for burnout. The present qualitative pilot study evaluated a mindfulness-based group intervention, referred to as Compassion, Presence, and Resilience Training (CPR-T), for oncology interprofessional teams. The purpose of this study was to elucidate the subjective experience of oncology health care providers receiving CPR-T and their perceptions of its benefits, risks, or challenges. The CPR-T was delivered to providers from two oncology teams in a large cancer center in Canada. Ten of these providers participated in semistructured interviews 1 to 5 months after completing the CPR-T. The interview transcripts were coded using a thematic analysis strategy. Five benefits of the CPR-T were identified: learning to pause, acquiring a working definition of stress and self-care, becoming fully present, building self-compassion, and receiving organizational acknowledgment and recognition of stress. In addition, two participant-identified challenges were recognized: sharing vulnerability within interprofessional teams and committing to a sitting meditation practice. These findings demonstrate positive transformations as a result of the CPR-T, as well as important challenges, and have important implications for holistic health care practice in oncology. Further research is necessary to validate the findings of this explorative study.


2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 140-147
Author(s):  
Kayla E. Boehm ◽  
Blaine C. Long ◽  
Mitchell T. Millar ◽  
Kevin C. Miller

Effectiveness of Kinesiology Tex Tape (KTT) is conflicting, with some clinicians supporting and others refuting its effects. There is limited information on the psychological effects of KTT or whether its increased use has been influenced by professional athletes. The purpose of this study was to assess the physiological, psychological, and use of KTT. A descriptive survey on the use of KTT was performed with athletic trainers and other health care providers. Many reported that KTT benefited patients physiologically and psychologically. Those who thought KTT provided a physiological benefit indicated that they use it. Many indicated KTT benefited patients psychologically, without impacting them physiologically. In addition, clinicians indicated KTT use has been influenced by professional athletes.


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