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Health Care on My Cell Phone

In the business world, a key goal for many companies is to achieve some form of competitive advantage over rivals. Of course, creating a new product that no one has ever thought of before, or a product that is so much better than previous ones, definitely gives an organization a competitive advantage (think of the Apple iPod, for example). However, it is often possible to also develop competitive advantages from creative uses of existing technologies. One of these exciting newer trends in the world of medicine is mobile health, also called mHealth.

mHealth offers health care services delivered via mobile technology, such as cellular or smartphones, tablets, or personal digital assistants (PDAs). Mobile health care services can include compliance (ensuring that patients follow their medication plans), information dissemination (providing caloric information for obese patients or sugar content for diabetic patients), or monitoring (measuring hypertension or cholesterol or tracking activity). Surveys conducted in 2014 suggest that 70% of people use apps to track their health and fitness daily, with 40% of individuals sharing this information with their doctors.

The idea of mHealth is to provide health care services where they are needed, often to those who cannot access them. One application called text4baby from Voxiva helps prevent infant mortality by sending weekly text messages to young women about their babies’ health. There are also mobile health screening programs at home for executives in Pakistan and at truck stops for truck drivers in Canada. mHealth smoking applications have been shown to help smokers quit smoking. Another company called Avacta developed a handheld device to detect dangerous flu diseases in the field without having to bring samples to laboratories for tests. In China and Malaysia, doctors’ offices have started using less expensive text messaging instead of phone calls to remind patients of appointments; results include improved attendance by 7% in China and reduced nonattendance rates of 40% in Malaysia. An even more exciting potential for mHealth is in providing health services to remote regions of developing countries, which are facing constant growth of life-threatening chronic diseases (e.g., hypertension, obesity, heart disease, and diabetes) and communicable diseases. In developing countries, there are limited health care infrastructures, limited hospital resources, and not enough health care workers, particularly in remote regions. This is where mHealth can make a difference, because even in remote regions of developing countries, mobile phones are often available. There was a 90.2% penetration rate of mobile phones in developing countries as a whole in 2014, reaching the point where almost all people have access to mobile phones.

Questions

1. What mHealth applications are you aware of?

2. What mHealth applications do you use?

3. Are there mHealth applications that you would use if they existed? What are they?

4. What are the benefits of mHealth for existing health care organizations? For consumers?