An Android Mobile-Based Environmental Health Information Source for Malaysian Context

Background

In the past, many environmental health issues were not delivered to the public efficiently. The print and television press often did not headline environmental news. The mobile technologies revolution in the late 1990s mostly served the purpose of providing voice communication over the phone. People were passive consumers of news reports about environmental health hazards, seldom ones which could affect their own health.

In the early 2000s several studies of environmental health tracking tools were established with a main goal: to protect communities by providing federal, state, and local agencies with information they could use to plan, apply and evaluate environmental health actions (California Environmental Health Investigation Branch, 2012; Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 2010; European Environment Agency, 2011; Freifeld & Brownstein, 2007; Wisconsin Department of Health Services, 2011). While existing environmental health surveillance systems have been proven to serve as an effective mode for spreading health information to their respective users, the idea of “borderless” information dissemination should be also considered.