Abstract
Pervasive mobile health is mobile health that provides healthcare services accessible regardless of time and place with patients can continuously be connected through their smart mobile devices. It offers healthcare providers a more comprehensive perspective of patients' condition and thus aid in achieving complex healthcare goal(s) such as building lasting relationships with patients. The service can be further extended to accommodate customers' participation in health and healthcare processes to improve healthcare services by extending roles of patients. The advancement of the Web technologies, especially social networks, push eHealth to embrace mobile devices (mHealth) and personalize customers centric services with a possibility to extend and improve services by enabling active participation of patients, patient's families, and the community at large in healthcare processes and personal health decision making. This chapter addresses some important concepts of mHealth, challenges, future trends, and some related terminologies to provide a holistic view of mHealth.
TopBackground
Currently almost every healthcare organization depends on information and communication technology (ICT) in every level of their activities. One of the most valued aspects of ICT is its capability to enhance processes or functions to improve consistency, accuracy, and efficiency. Similarly, efficient and effective healthcare services have become increasingly dependent on accurate and detailed clinical information, which is transferred from interrelated departments or even between organizations (Conrick, 2006). In addition, people’s demands have changed because they have been empowered by the vast amount of information available and accesible to them through smart mobile devices, including mHealth related services (Anshari et al., 2013). For example, half of smartphone owners in US use their devices to get health information and one fifth of smartphone owners have health-related apps (Fox & Duggan, 2012). Despite some limitations of smartphones (Koushanfar et al., 2000), they can be used as services platform for mobile health information delivery, access and communication (Nkosi et al., 2010).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Healthcare: Refers to the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in humans. Practitioners in medicine, optometry, dentistry, nursing, pharmacy, allied health, and other care providers deliver health care. It refers to the work done in providing primary care, secondary care, and tertiary care, as well as in public health.
Health Information System (HIS): Refers to any system that captures, stores, manages or transmits information related to the health of individuals or the activities of organizations that work within the health sector. This definition incorporates things such as district level routine information systems, disease surveillance systems, and includes laboratory information systems, hospital patient administration systems (PAS) and human resource management information systems (HRMIS).
Smartphone: Refers to a mobile phone built on a mobile operating system, with more advanced computing capabilities and connectivity than feature phones.
Healthcare Business process: Refers to a set of activities which activity adds value to the customer. These are registration, patient care, discharge, marketing, and service.
Mobile Health (mHealth): mHealth is an extension of electronic health (e-health) in which healthcare services can be accessed through smart mobile devices. The scope of mHealth is mobile personal (mPersonal), mobile social (mSocial), and mobile medical (mMedical).
Electronic Health (e-Health): According to WHO (2005) is a cost effective and secure use of ICT in support of health and health related fields, including healthcare service, health surveillance, health literature and health education, knowledge and research.
Patient Empowerment: In healthcare is a principle to give patients more power in making decisions related to their health and to give them required authority to access or produce information related to their health.
Pervasive Computing: Refers to an embedding microprocessor in device (mobile) to connect and communicate in the networks.
Pervasive Knowledge: Refers to a massive knowledge generated from multi sources of information such as social network, smart mobile devices, and structure knowledge management database.