The 10 Most Trusted Healthcare IT Security Solution Providers 2018 Final file Healthcare IT optimize | Page 25

Pocket Wellness
M
obile health or mhealth is a general term coined for the use of mobile or wireless technology in the
healthcare systems. It is a part of ehealth healthcare practice. The most common application of the
ehealth is to educate the consumers about the preventive health care services. It is also used in disease
surveillance, treatment support, epidemic outbreak tracking, and chronic disease management. mhealth is popular
due to the areas that are accompanied by a large population and the widespread mobile phone usage. Within the
digital health, mhealth encompasses all the application of multimedia and telecommunication ensuring accurate
delivery of the healthcare and health information.
Some of the practical examples of mhealth are the voice communication and mobile messaging for the provider to
improve the health behavior. Mobile technologies are helping the healthcare sector in improving training and service
quality of healthcare workers, reducing the cost of service along with reducing the redundancy and duplication of the
collected information.
Motivation
One of the main aspects of the mhealth is to push the limits of the healthcare sector and quickly acquire, transport,
store, secure, and process the raw processed data into useful and meaningful results. mhealth offer various abilities to
the remote individuals so that they can participate in the healthcare value matrix, which was not possible in the past.
In many such cases, these participants can provide their valuable contribution in gathering data or
create awareness of the disease in public health like outdoor pollution, violence, or drugs.
Motivation arises in mhealth due to the following two factors:
The first factor is the rise of the constraints faced by the healthcare system of
developing nations. These constraints include the population growth, limited
financial resources, the burden of disease prevalence, and a large number of
the rural inhabitant.
The second factor is the rise in mobile phones in the world and its large
population. The greater access to the mobile phones in all segments of the
country helps in saving information and transitional costs for the proper
healthcare delivery.
Health Outcomes
The integration of the technology with the health sector has promoted the
betterment of the health, its lifestyle, and has improved the decision-making
ability of healthcare professionals. Overall improvement is seen in the areas like
health information and the instant connection between patients and health professionals,
which was not possible before. Following that, there is an increased usage of technology that has
reduced the health costs and has improved the efficiency of the healthcare systems. The growth of health-related
applications has further boosted the growth of the mhealth.
A potential implementation is the direct voice communication for the poor literates and local-language versed
people. The phones equipped with the local language aid in information transfer capabilities that were not available
before. With the help of the mobile technology, the support for the existing workflow within the mhealth sector and
the general public has increased.
| September 2018 |
23