Mobile Health (mHealth) - Enhancing Healthcare and Improving Clinical Outcomes

Wednesday 16 January 2013, Amsterdam

The research report: “Mobile Health (mHealth) - Enhancing Healthcare and Improving Clinical Outcomes”, examines how mHealth, which is the facilitation of health-related information through mobile-enabled technologies, has been applied by the pharmaceutical industry in drug development and by healthcare providers in the developed and emerging economies to improve healthcare services and treatment outcomes.

The report investigates how the healthcare system has migrated from a paper-based system to an electronic one and the innovative ways in which this can be used enhance the flow of medical information. It assesses the growing use of mobile health apps as reference and diagnostic tools to support decision-making and highlights how mHealth can improve communication between patients and healthcare providers; empowering patients to take a more active role in their health and improving the continuum of healthcare from the clinic to the home. It highlights how technologies devised for the developed countries are not always suitable for the developing countries and the need for local communities to devise mHealth solutions to address local issues such as infectious diseases (dengue fever, AIDS/HIV and tuberculosis) and high infant and maternal mortality rates.

Analysis concludes that mHealth has huge potential to bridge the gap within existing healthcare systems but highlights the significant differences in the rate of adoption of mHealth in the developed world compared to the developing countries due to their existing infrastructures and differing “doctor-centric” and “patient centric” approaches to healthcare.

The mHealth alliance has identified five critical areas that need to be addressed if mHealth is to become main stream in global health: evidence building, standards and interoperability, sustainable financing, capacity building and policy. This will only be achieved if all stakeholders (patients, healthcare professionals and providers, pharmaceutical industry, mobile network operators and governments) work together to determine the ways in which mHealth can add value and provide significant advantages over traditional routes of healthcare communication.