Improving the health status of people by using mobile devices is called mHealth. In a broader sense, mHealth encompasses any use of mobile technology to address health care challenges such as access, quality, affordability, matching of resources, and behavioural norms through the exchange of information.
Mobile phone, laptop, net-book and tablet are used as mobile devices. Developed countries have many facilities for providing health care. But there are different types of challenges in developing countries to ensure health care. mHealth is supporting both developed and developing countries to improve health care services and becoming popular day by day. Mobile devices can help provide health care even in remote areas.
Developing countries suffer from various complicated health-related problems, which are marginal in developed countries. mHealth helps to reduce the spread of complicated diseases, offers opportunities for treatment, builds awareness about diseases and motivates people to change behaviour. Different non-communicable ailments like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, and chronic respiratory disease are the cause of the deaths of 35 million people worldwide. About 80 per cent of these deaths takes place in the developing countries. mHealth can increase the scope of the healthcare system and substantially reduce diseases and deaths.
Maternal and child death is a great threat for the developing world. To achieve MDG 4 and 5, we need to reduce the death of under-five children. We also need to lower the complications during pregnancy and childbirth. Every year, 350,000 women die because of the complications during childbirth and thousands of women suffer from lifelong complications and face economic problems.
About 24 per cent children can survive up to the age of 10 whose mothers die during childbirth and 89 per cent children can survive whose mothers are alive. mHealth can provide different life-saving services to save mother's life.
Besides health care services, mHealth is also used for social and behavioural change, skill development in communication, supply management, information management and financial transactions etc. Financial transaction helps to get access of health care. Supply management helps to ensure the supply of medical and emergency equipment. The information management system helps patients to get healthcare related information.
In Ghana, Liberia and Tanzania, telemedicine and provider-to-provider communication help provide support such as diagnosis, treatment and management of diseases. In Nepal, demographic and health survey was conducted by using a tablet computer in 2011 which was very quick and accurate.
Different mHealth programmes are operational in Bangladesh like mCare, Aponjon and many more. These provide information and advice to pregnant mothers regarding health and nutrition related matters. Recently, eHealth pilot project has been undertaken in Bangladesh. The project titled 'BKMI' is under Global Knowledge for Health (K4Health) project. The project seeks to strengthen health, population and nutrition (HPN) communication efforts of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in Bangladesh. Under this initiative, digital materials-net-books were provided for three months to the health workers of Chittagong and Sylhet area to build their capacities and improve health care services. In that pilot project, health workers got the chance to learn from e-courses and e-toolkits.
These easy-to-learn pictorial messages help the field workers to gain updated knowledge and perform their duty in a better way. This has increased the interest of community people to seek heath care. BKMI- II is being implemented now, and its aim is to develop the capacity of the government of Bangladesh, USAID and its implementing partners, and other donor partners. Hopefully, this initiative will be able to leave a positive impact in the country.
According to a recent report, mHealth can reduce data collection cost by approximately 24 per cent, the health care cost of elderly people by 25 per cent and maternal and pre-natal mortality by 30 per cent. According to the World Health Organisation's global observatory for eHealth, about 83 per cent of 112 countries has at least one mheath programme. According to that survey, the gap between low and high income country adoption of mHealth is not so high.
Mobile health messages are cost effective, portable and accessible. They help dispel myths, highlight warning signs, and can provide better health care from limited resources. So we have to remove the barriers to adopt mHealth programmes. The barriers are insufficient financial resources, lack of sustainable business models, limited evidence, difficulty to coordinate with stakeholders and implementation of a large-scale project after piloting etc. The success of mHealth also depends on effective monitoring and evaluation of the programme. Finally, we have to find out more innovative ideas like mHealth to build a happy and healthy world.
sharmin.sk@gmail.com
Taking care of health through mobile phones
Sharmin Sultana | Published: February 15, 2014 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2024 06:01:00
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