Challenges of Mobile Health Applications in Developing Countries

Author(s):  
Nikhil Yadav ◽  
Christian Poellabauer

Global health care has become an enormous industry worldwide, where trends such as aging populations, environmental and climate changes, catastrophic events, and the spread and evolution of diseases pose significant challenges. With the rapid growth of information technology (IT), wireless technologies, and mobile services, health care processes are able to increasingly benefit from new technological advances and applications built on top of them. Specifically, the area of “Mobile Health” or mHealth, which leverages mobile phone functionality to provide medical and public health services, has become a very promising trend. Wireless and mobile technologies have great potential in improving patient care, reducing costs, streamlining processes, allowing adherence to regulations, and many other health-related activities. However, the developing world faces numerous challenges in realizing the infrastructure and technical expertise required to adopt mHealth solutions and applications. In this chapter, we focus on these challenges in the developing world and highlight existing problems and risks in realizing mHealth applications and services. This chapter also proposes various solutions to overcome these problems.

Author(s):  
Nikhil Yadav ◽  
Mehrdad Aliasgari ◽  
Christian Poellabauer

Global health care has become an enormous industry worldwide, where trends such as aging populations, environmental and climate changes, catastrophic events, and the spread and evolution of diseases pose significant challenges. With the rapid growth of information technology (IT), wireless technologies, and mobile services, health care processes are able to increasingly benefit from new technological advances. Specifically, the area of “mobile health” or mHealth, which leverages mobile phone functionality to provide medical and public health services, has become a very promising trend. Wireless and mobile technologies have great potential in improving patient care, reducing costs, streamlining processes, and allowing adherence to regulations. However, the developing world faces numerous challenges in realizing the infrastructure and technical expertise required to adopt secure mHealth solutions and applications. In this paper the authors discuss these challenges and solutions suitable for the developing world, highlighting existing problems and risks in realizing secure mHealth applications and services.


2020 ◽  
pp. 859-883
Author(s):  
Nikhil Yadav ◽  
Mehrdad Aliasgari ◽  
Christian Poellabauer

Global health care has become an enormous industry worldwide, where trends such as aging populations, environmental and climate changes, catastrophic events, and the spread and evolution of diseases pose significant challenges. With the rapid growth of information technology (IT), wireless technologies, and mobile services, health care processes are able to increasingly benefit from new technological advances. Specifically, the area of “mobile health” or mHealth, which leverages mobile phone functionality to provide medical and public health services, has become a very promising trend. Wireless and mobile technologies have great potential in improving patient care, reducing costs, streamlining processes, and allowing adherence to regulations. However, the developing world faces numerous challenges in realizing the infrastructure and technical expertise required to adopt secure mHealth solutions and applications. In this paper the authors discuss these challenges and solutions suitable for the developing world, highlighting existing problems and risks in realizing secure mHealth applications and services.


2021 ◽  
Vol 79 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Clara Li ◽  
Judith Neugroschl ◽  
Carolyn W. Zhu ◽  
Amy Aloysi ◽  
Corbett A. Schimming ◽  
...  

Mobile technologies are becoming ubiquitous in the world, changing the way we communicate and provide patient care and services. Some of the most compelling benefits of mobile technologies are in the areas of disease prevention, health management, and care delivery. For all the advances that are occurring in mobile health, its full potential for older adults is only starting to emerge. Yet, existing mobile health applications have design flaws that may limit usability by older adults. The aim of this paper is to review barriers and identify knowledge gaps where more research is needed to improve the accessibility of mobile health use in aging populations. The same observations might apply to those who are not elderly, including individuals suffering from severe mental or medical illnesses.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ju-Ling Hsiao ◽  
Rai-Fu Chen

BACKGROUND With the widespread use of mobile technologies, mobile information systems have become crucial tools in health care operations. Although the appropriate use of mobile health (mHealth) may result in major advances in expanding health care coverage (increasing decision-making speeds, managing chronic conditions, and providing suitable health care in emergencies), previous studies have argued that current mHealth research does not adequately evaluate mHealth interventions, and it does not provide sufficient evidence regarding the effects on health. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to facilitate the widespread use of mHealth systems; an accurate evaluation of the systems from the users’ perspective is essential after the implementation and use of the system in daily health care practices. This study extends the expectation-confirmation model by using characteristics of individuals, technology, and tasks to identify critical factors affecting mHealth continuance and performance from the perspective of health care professionals (HCPs). METHODS A questionnaire survey was used to collect data from HCPs who were experienced in using mHealth systems of a Taiwanese teaching hospital. In total, 282 questionnaires were distributed, and 201 complete and valid questionnaires were returned, thus indicating a valid response rate of 71.3% (201/282). The collected data were analyzed using WarpPLS version 5.0 (ScriptWarp Systems). RESULTS The results revealed that mHealth continuance (R2=0.522) was mainly affected by perceived usefulness, technology maturity, individual habits, task mobility, and user satisfaction, whereas individual performance (R2=0.492) was affected by mHealth continuance. In addition, user satisfaction (R2=0.548) was affected by confirmation and perceived usefulness of mHealth, whereas perceived usefulness (R2=0.521) was affected by confirmation. This implied that confirmation played a key role in affecting perceived usefulness and user satisfaction. Furthermore, the results showed that mHealth continuance positively affected individual performance. CONCLUSIONS The identified critical factors influencing mHealth continuance and performance can be used as a useful assessment tool by hospitals that have implemented mHealth systems to facilitate the use and infusion of the systems. Furthermore, the results can help health care institutions that intend to introduce or develop mHealth applications to identify critical issues and effectively allocate limited resources to mHealth systems.


Author(s):  
Petre Iltchev ◽  
Andrzej Śliwczyński ◽  
Potr Szynkiewicz ◽  
Michał Marczak

This chapter analyzes the role of m-health applications supporting patients with chronic diseases (based on examples from asthma care). The purpose of the chapter is to describe the mobile health application development cycle. The chapter begins with a presentation of asthma as a chronic disease and its prevalence and costs for society, as a determinant of the role and place of m-health applications in chronic disease management. Subsequent sections analyze trends in the development of health care, information systems, and health care payment systems as components of the environment for the implementation of m-health applications. The chapter focuses on prerequisites for the introduction of this type of solutions, presents existing applications, and discusses how to define the key functionalities and benefits for patients, payers, and doctors. The financing cycle, barriers to implementation, and future trends are also addressed.


Author(s):  
Petre Iltchev ◽  
Andrzej Śliwczyński ◽  
Potr Szynkiewicz ◽  
Michał Marczak

This chapter analyzes the role of m-health applications supporting patients with chronic diseases (based on examples from asthma care). The purpose of the chapter is to describe the mobile health application development cycle. The chapter begins with a presentation of asthma as a chronic disease and its prevalence and costs for society, as a determinant of the role and place of m-health applications in chronic disease management. Subsequent sections analyze trends in the development of health care, information systems, and health care payment systems as components of the environment for the implementation of m-health applications. The chapter focuses on prerequisites for the introduction of this type of solutions, presents existing applications, and discusses how to define the key functionalities and benefits for patients, payers, and doctors. The financing cycle, barriers to implementation, and future trends are also addressed.


Author(s):  
Brittany V. Allard ◽  
Michelle Lee D'Abundo

The field of health care needs to change in order to address challenges such as rising health care costs, aging populations and the need to treat increasing numbers of people with chronic health conditions. All of this must be accomplished while reducing costs and maintaining quality of care. Health care professionals are being tasked with facilitating this change. Like many other health care professions, athletic training has turned to evidence-based practice to assure that athletic trainers are trained to deliver the highest quality of care in the most efficient way to their patients. The transition to integrating evidence-based practice will be challenging and will require a massive diffusion of innovation throughout the field of athletic training.


Author(s):  
Nadire Cavus

Abstract Prior to the introduction of mobile technologies, the manual system of checking patients’ vital signs after approximately seven hours increased the health risk of the patients. Some of the patients’ health was jeopardised, worsening their situation, others re-admitted and others even passing on. The introduction and extensive use of mobile technologies has transformed the delivery of health care. Mobile applications with early warning systems are now dominating the health sector in an attempt to alert medical practitioners to act promptly to the patients’ needs. This paper reviews effects of mobile applications in the health sector as well as the success and failures of Mobile health applications. The assimilation of mobile applications in health care is marking an incredible venture in the health care industry. Keywords: mHealth, mobile applications, success, failures, health sector, mobile technologies, adoption, patients, hospitals.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudia Eberle ◽  
Maxine Loehnert ◽  
Stefanie Stichling

Abstract Background Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) emerges worldwide and is closely associated with short- and long-term health issues in women and their offspring, such as pregnancy and birth complications respectively comorbidities, Type 2 Diabetes (T2D), metabolic syndrome as well as cardiovascular diseases. Against this background, mobile health applications (mHealth-Apps) do open up new possibilities to improve the management of GDM. Therefore, we analyzed the clinical effectiveness of specific mHealth-Apps on clinical health-related short and long-term outcomes in mother and child. Methods A systematic literature search in Medline (PubMed), Cochrane Library, Embase, CINAHL and Web of Science Core Collection databases as well as Google Scholar was performed. We selected studies published 2008 to 2020 analyzing women diagnosed with GDM using specific mHealth-Apps. Controlled clinical trials (CCT) and randomized controlled trials (RCT) were included. Study quality was assessed using the Effective Public Health Practice Project (EPHPP) tool. Results In total, n = 6 publications (n = 5 RCTs, n = 1 CCT; and n = 4 moderate, n = 2 weak quality), analyzing n = 408 GDM patients in the intervention and n = 405 in the control groups, were included. Compared to control groups, fasting blood glucose, 2-h postprandial blood glucose, off target blood glucose measurements, delivery mode (more vaginal deliveries and fewer (emergency) caesarean sections) and patient compliance showed improving trends. Conclusion mHealth-Apps might improve health-related outcomes, particularly glycemic control, in the management of GDM. Further studies need to be done in more detail.


2020 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 117693512095419
Author(s):  
Hosna Salmani ◽  
Maryam Ahmadi ◽  
Nafiseh Shahrokhi

Introduction: Mobile health is an emerging technology around the world that can be effective in cancer screening. This study aimed to examine the effectiveness of mobile health applications on cancer screening. Methods: We conducted a systematic literature review of studies related to the use of mobile health applications in cancer screening. We also conducted a comprehensive search of articles on cancer screening related to the use of mobile health applications in journals published between January 1, 2008, and January 31, 2019, using 5 databases: IEEE, Scopus, Web of Science, Science Direct and PubMed. Results: A total of 23 articles met the inclusion criteria and were included in the present review. All studies have identified positive effects of applications on cancer screening and clinical health outcomes. Furthermore, more than half of mobile applications had multiple functions such as providing information, planning and education. Moreover, most of the studies, which examined the satisfaction of patients and quality improvement, showed healthcare application users have significantly higher satisfaction of living and it leads to improving quality. Conclusion: This study found that the use of mobile health applications has a positive impact on health-related behaviours and outcomes. Application users were more satisfied with applying mobile health applications to manage their health condition in comparison with users who received conventional care.


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