mHealth: A Low-Cost Approach for Effective Disease Diagnosis, Prediction, Monitoring and Management – Effective Disease Diagnosis

Introduction

According to Iyawa, Herselman and Botha (2016, p.246), digital health can be defined as “an improvement in the way healthcare provision is conceived and delivered by healthcare providers through the use of information and communication technologies to monitor and improve the wellbeing and health of patients and to empower patients in the management of their health and that of their families.” This definition suggests that digital health goes beyond the traditional approach of providing care with the use of certain technologies, but encompasses the outcome of the use of these digital technologies for healthcare. As such, there must be an improvement in health outcomes after adopting these technologies for the management of patients’ health. Mesko et al. (2017, p.1) define digital health as “the cultural transformation of how disruptive technologies that provide digital and objective data accessible to both caregivers and patients leads to an equal level doctor-patient relationship with shared decision-making and the democratization of care.” This definition suggests that technologies can enable patients to take part in the healthcare delivery process. Some of these digital health technologies include mobile technologies for healthcare, also referred to as mobile health (mHealth), wearables and sensors (Iyawa, Botha and Herselman, 2016). The literature adequately captures how these technologies have been used for improved health outcomes (Teng et al., 2019; Shabut et al., 2018; Seppala et al., 2019).