Diana Manos, Healthcare IT News
“At the close of the third annual mHealth Summit, held Dec. 5-7 in Washington, D.C., keynote speakers highlighted the vast impact mobile phones and other mobile devices are having — and will continue to have — on healthcare delivery in the United States and worldwide.
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Joel Selanikio, Mobile Message
“In 1995, I was working as a health officer for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). One evening found me kneeling on the concrete floor of a small hostel in rural Western Kenya, pocket knife in hand, laptop on the floor in front of me. With the hostel manager’s permission, I was hand-splicing the one telephone landline embedded in the wall to the port on my laptop – in order to connect to the Internet via a phone number in Nairobi.
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Bellina L, Missoni E. Health and Technology, 2011
As previously demonstrated, m-phones can be easily used, without any adapter, to photograph and send images from a microscope. The objective of the current study was to test the appropriateness and educational potential of this mobile diagnosis approach with health workers in limited-resource settings, such as health units in Uganda, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. A total of 61 lab technicians were trained in basic lab skills and in using the m-phone to capture microscopic images and send them to distant Reference Centers for a second opinion. Structured pre-test interviews were used to define parameters such as health workers’ sex and age, duty station, schooling, experience in the laboratory, access to internet and availability to and use of m-phones. Images from the microscope were also uploaded on the available computers and shared on the screen to facilitate group discussions and comparisons with reference images.
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Pete Wilton, Medical Xpress
“The kit, developed by Oxford University and South African researchers, enables people to record and analyze their own heart sounds using a mobile phone microphone.
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Christopher Joyce, NPR
“The year 2010 was a very bad one for Haiti. It started with an earthquake that killed over 300,000 people, mostly in the crowded capital of Port-au-Prince. After that, cholera originating in a U.N. camp broke out in a northern province and eventually spread to the city.
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Donald G. McNeil Jr., The New York Times
“Using cellphones to broadcast text messages reminding health workers in Kenya how to treat children’s malaria increased the number of cases handled correctly, a new study has found.
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Paul Pisklak, MedGadget
“It seems intuitive (at least to Medgadgeteers) that mobile technology can be used to improve health outcomes, but we still need studies to actually put data behind this idea. A recent study of the DiabetesManager mobile health platform from WellDoc is a step in this direction. We last reported about WellDoc’s mobile diabetes application in 2010, and since that time it has been tested in a clinical trial and was shown to reduce HgbA1c by 1.9%.
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Quinn CC et al, Diabetes Care, 2011
OBJECTIVE
To test whether adding mobile application coaching and patient/provider web portals to community primary care compared with standard diabetes management would reduce glycated hemoglobin levels in patients with type 2 diabetes.
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Furber GV et al, The Journal of Adolescent Health, 48(1)
BACKGROUND
Mobile phones play a central role in the lives of young people and are being increasingly recognized as valuable tools in health care. However, there is a paucity of studies exploring the use of mobile phones in youth outreach mental health services. Our outreach team’s experience is that enabling youth to access their therapist directly through mobile phone improves engagement and retention, and short message service (SMS) in particular, is a useful tool for coordinating appointments. The purpose of this study was to audit the content of SMS exchanges between therapists and clients and to investigate the extent of inappropriate SMS use.
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Andrew J. Dupree, ICTworks
“I am Andrew J. Dupree, and in the developing world, many people die every day due to lack of access to basic medical measurements, such as blood pressure, and corresponding diagnoses.
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Estrin D, Sim I. Science, 330(6005)
Chronic diseases like diabetes, asthma, and obesity account for 46% of global disease burden. The traditional model of episodic care in clinic and hospital-based settings is suboptimal for improving chronic disease outcomes. Mobile communication devices, in conjunction with Internet and social media, present opportunities to enhance disease prevention and management by extending health interventions beyond the reach of traditional care—an approach referred to as mHealth.
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Karen Cheng, Project HealthDesign
“One of the things I love about our project and the other Project Health Design projects is the creative use of cell phones to collect data and share health information. Cell phones have so much potential to expand access to health care for people who, for any number of reasons (e.g., lack of health insurance, distance to a health facility, unsure when it is appropriate to go see a doctor), might have limited access.
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Ann Tracy Mueller, Health Care Communication News
“Can you believe it? Africa has 624 million mobile phone subscribers.
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Rajat Kumar, iMedicalApps
“In South Africa, there is no shortage of diversity. Immigrants, natives, city-dwellers and tribal members share a landscape that ranges from cosmopolitan to provincial. However, even in rural areas where basic infrastructure may be lacking, people can now stay connected to family and keep up on global events through their cellphones. Thus, the mobile technology boom has led to a leap-frog effect on communication.
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Dana Hughes, ABC News
“Over five billion people in the world today have cell phones, and they are doing a lot more than just talking. Globally, people are using mobile phones to surf the web, telecommute, and increasingly in the developing world, send and receive money. Technology experts believe that the next revolution will not be televised, but be driven by devices that fit into the palm of your hand.
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Tamar Kahn, Business Day
“Cellphones are a classic “leapfrog technology”, enabling communities that previously had no access to services such as banks or the internet to gain access to these services on a simple handheld device, without the big investments needed to bring older versions of these technologies to their doors.
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Busis N. Neurologic Clinics, 28(2)
Smartphones make mobile computing at point of care practical. Smartphones can think, sync, and link. Built-in and user-installed applications facilitate communications between neurologists and their medical colleagues and patients and augment data acquisition and processing in the core medical information domains of patient data, clinical decision support, and practice management.
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Piette JD et al, American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 40(6)
BACKGROUND
Although interactive voice response (IVR) calls can be an effective tool for chronic disease management, many regions of the world lack the infrastructure to provide these services. PURPOSE This study evaluated the feasibility and potential impact of an IVR program using a cloud-computing model to improve diabetes management in Honduras.
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Juzang I et al, J Telemed Telecare, 17(3)
We explored the feasibility of engaging young black men in a 12-week text messaging programme about HIV prevention. There were two non-randomized groups of 30 young men each. The participants were aged 16-20 years, self-identifying as black or African-American, sexually active, who owned a mobile phone and lived in Philadelphia. They received three text messages per week for 12 weeks. People in the intervention group received text messages about HIV prevention, while those in the control group received text messages about nutrition.
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Rotheram-Borus M-J et al, Trials, 12
BACKGROUND
Pregnant women living with HIV (WLH) face daily challenges maintaining their own and their babies’ health and mental health. Standard Prevention of Maternal to Child Transmission (PMTCT) programs are not designed to address these challenges.
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