The Case for mHealth in Developing Countries
Patricia Mechael · Innovations Technology Governance Globalization · 2009
While the health community debates whether a specialized field of "mHealth" exists and how to define it, most people will agree that individuals around the world are using mobile technologies to access health services and information and that health professionals are formally and informally integrating mobile technologies into public health and clinical activities.As mobile phones and other mobile devices become part of everyday life, people become better equipped to respond to emergencies, consult with peers and health professionals about health issues as they arise, and access health services that are increasingly being delivered through mobile phone based systems, such as remote patient monitoring.In developing countries, people frequently acquire mobile phones just in case of emergencies, including a taxi driver I interviewed in Upper Egypt in 2002, who shared the following experience with me:There had been an accident on the highway to Samalut: … a taxi .. turned upside down.That was two years ago, and the news had spread, and on that day I was working, and I returned late.I found my wife in a hysterical condition and when I asked her what was wrong, she told me that she didn't know my whereabouts, and she heard that there was a taxi accident, and that I was late.So at that moment I felt that the mobile would be useful.(Mechael, 2006, p. 126) The term mobile health or mHealth, also written as m-health, describes the use of mobile telecommunication and multimedia technologies as they are integrated within increasingly mobile and wireless health care delivery systems (Istepanian & Lacal, 2003).It can also be described as "mobile computing, medical sensor, and communications technologies for health care" (Istepanian, 2004).While the term is familiar to those in biomedicine and informatics, it is only now being clearly defined and frameworks are being developed for the broader medical and public health communities, as well as for the general public and stakeholders in the mobile phone industry.