The New Era of m-Health

What does m-Health mean?

The term m-Health was first coined by Robert Istepanian to describe “emerging mobile communications and network technologies for healthcare” Today, m-Health is well-established as an abbreviation for?mobile health. In a broad sense,?m-Health is a group of apps, devices, connections that allow the user to be mobile, or reach out in a variety of ways.

Mobile shopping, mobile banking, are all things that have gone mobile over the last few years, think of m-Health as that same thing for healthcare.

What is the difference between m-Health and telehealth?

The difference between m-Health and telehealth is that telehealth refers to all instances of healthcare via the use of modern technology, whereas?m-Health refers to the concept of mobile self-care?— consumer technologies like smartphone, wearables, and tablet apps that enable consumers to capture their health data, without any healthcare providers’ assistance or interpretation.

Uses of m-Health

m-Health apps are designed to support diagnostic procedures, to aid health workers in decision-making for treatments, and to advance disease-related education for physicians and people under treatment.?Mobile health has much potential in medicine and, if used in conjunction with human factors may improve access to care, the scope, and quality of health care services that can be provided. Some applications of mobile health may also improve the ability to improve accountability in healthcare and improve the continuum of care by connecting interdisciplinary team members. m-Health is one aspect of eHealth that is pushing the limits of how to acquire, transport, store, process, and secure the raw and processed data to deliver meaningful results.

m-Health offers the ability of remote individuals to participate in the health care value matrix, which may not have been possible in the past. Participation does not imply just the consumption of health care services. In many cases, remote users are valuable contributors to gather data regarding disease and public health concerns such as outdoor pollution, drugs, and violence.

While many uses exist, below are the seven major application categories within the m-Health field:

Education and awareness - Education and awareness programs within the m-Health field are largely about the spreading of mass information from source to the recipient through short message services (SMS). In education and awareness applications, SMS messages are sent directly to users' phones to offer information about various subjects, including testing and treatment methods, availability of health services, and disease management.

Helpline - Helpline typically consists of a specific phone number that any individual can call to gain access to a range of medical services. These include phone consultations, counseling, service complaints, and information on facilities, drugs, equipment, and/or available mobile health clinics.

Diagnostic and treatment support - Diagnostic and treatment support systems are typically designed to provide healthcare workers in remote areas advice about diagnosis and treatment of patients. While some projects may provide mobile phone applications—such as step-by-step medical decision tree systems—to help healthcare workers diagnose, other projects provide a direct diagnosis to patients themselves. In such cases, known as?telemedicine, patients might take a photograph of a wound or illness and allow a remote physician to diagnose to help treat the medical problem. Both diagnosis and treatment support projects attempt to mitigate the cost and time of travel for patients located in remote areas.

Communication and training for healthcare workers- m-Health within the communication and training for healthcare workers subset involve connecting healthcare workers to sources of information through their mobile phone especially in rural or remote areas. This involves connecting healthcare workers to other healthcare workers, medical institutions, ministries of health, or other houses of medical information.

?Disease and epidemic outbreak tracking – m-Health plays is a very crucial role in the tracking of Disease and epidemic outbreak tracking. Using smart mobile devices facilitates providing health services, speeds up the process, and reduces the costs and complications of direct services. Also, m-Health is an appropriate method for encountering epidemic/pandemic outbreaks due to its extensive applications. In a pandemic outbreak like COVID-19, m-Health is one of the best choices to use in the patient-health worker relationship as telehealth-visits, using in fever monitoring/guidance, providing real-time information for healthcare providers, population monitoring, and detecting the disease based on obtained data from different locations. In India , the Arogya Setu m-app is doing an incredible job in the fight against COVID-19.

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Remote monitoring - Remote monitoring allows for greater involvement in the continued care of patients. Recent studies seem to show also the efficacy of inducing positive and negative affective states, using smartphones. Within environments of limited resources and beds—and subsequently, an 'outpatient' culture—remote monitoring allows healthcare workers to better track patient conditions, medication regimen adherence, and follow-up schedule.

Remote data collection - Projects within this area operate to utilize mobile phones' ability to collect and transmit data quickly, cheaply, and relatively efficiently. Data concerning the location and levels of specific diseases (such as?malaria,?HIV/AIDS,?TB,?Flu) can help medical systems or ministries of health or other organizations identify outbreaks and better target medical resources to areas of greatest need.

Know About some m-Health technologies

1) ePRO systems - Electronic patient-reported outcomes (ePRO) are patient-provided information about symptoms, side effects, drug timing, and other questions recorded on an electronic device during a clinical trial.

2) Wearable sensors - Wearable sensors, just as the name implies, are integrated into wearable objects or directly with the body to help monitor the health and/or provide clinically relevant data for care.

3) Digital contact tracing technologies - Technology can support case investigation and contact tracing but cannot take the place of the staff who interview, counsel, and provide support for those impacted by COVID-19. Two key types of technology can contribute to the contact tracing process: case management tools and proximity tracing/exposure notification tools.

A.?Case Management Make the traditional contact tracing process faster and more efficient:

? Streamline the electronic capture and management of data on patients and contacts

? Integrate workflows with surveillance systems or other workforce management tools

B.Proximity Tracing/Exposure Notification Identify more contacts than traditional contact tracing alone:

? Use voluntary, opt-in tools in addition to case management tools to augment traditional contact tracing

? Use Bluetooth or GPS technologies to estimate the proximity and duration of an individual’s exposure to patients diagnosed with COVID-19

Combining these technologies into an integrated, holistic mHealth solution us providing the opportunity to deploy an end-to-end solution incorporating tools for screening, risk profiling, achieving early detection, generating referrals for testing, tracking infections, tracking isolation management/quarantine, assuring social distance compliance, proving remote care, and tracking recovery.