mHealth: New Horizons for Health Through Mobile Technologies

The World Health Organization’s Global Observatory for eHealth just posted a report that takes stock of mHealth activities in 112 countries.

The report documents the maturity of mHealth activities, and barriers to mHealth adoption and scale.

From the UN Foundation:

Although the report shows a groundswell of mHealth activity globally, the majority of these projects are still in pilot phase. Two-thirds of countries surveyed reported between one and three mHealth activities, yet only 12% of reported efforts to evaluate their mHealth activities.
The four most frequently reported mHealth initiatives were health call centres (59%), emergency toll-free telephone services (55%), managing emergencies and disasters (54%), and mobile telemedicine (49%).  mHealth initiatives varied by region and income group, with health survey initiatives, for example, being among the most commonly reported mHealth activities in low income countries, yet among the least commonly reported mHealth activities globally.

The 14 mHealth activity types include: appointment reminders, community mobilization and health promotion, decision support systems, emergency toll-free telephone services, health call centers/health care telephone helplines, health surveillance, health surveys, information initiatives, mobile telemedicine, patient monitoring, patient records, public health emergencies, raising awareness, and treatment compliance.

Here’s the full report.

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