mHealth: New Horizons for Health through Mobile Technologies

Based on the findings of the second global survey on eHealth, the World Health Organization (WHO) launched this report on the state of mobile technology usage in the field of health. It was written with support from the mHealth Alliance, the United Nations Foundation, and the Vodafone Foundation.

The survey enquired about national trends in the adoption of mHealth in 14 specific areas ranging from the use of mobile technologies for health call centres and treatment compliance to mobile telemedicine and community mobilisation for health promotion. Member States were also asked to assess the most significant barriers to mHealth adoption for their country situation, as well as the practice of evaluating existing programmes

The indications for mHealth initiatives globally include the following:

• "The most frequently reported types of mHealth initiatives globally were health call centres/ health care telephone help lines (59%), emergency toll-free telephone services (55%), emergencies (54%), and mobile telemedicine (49%).
• The least frequently reported initiatives were health surveys (26%), surveillance (26%), awareness raising (23%), and decision support systems (19%)....
•  Forty-eight per cent of responding Member States reported the use of mobile devices for emergency and disaster situations.... Countries in the high-income group reported a greater range of initiatives compared to those in the low-income group....."

From the Conclusions of the report: "mHealth activity, or experimentation, was reported by four of five responding Member States, many of which often reported up to six projects. The adoption of mHealth appears to follow a certain path – it is most easily incorporated into processes and services which traditionally use voice communication. This would explain why the majority of countries are already offering health call centres, toll-free numbers, and emergency services using mobile communications. When considering countries where the infrastructure is underdeveloped, however, the results show low uptake (e.g. the African Region). Decision support systems and disease surveillance were two areas in which uptake among Member States was low....

An international framework for the evaluation of mHealth programmes, including meaningful and measurable indicators, would be an important step towards data collection. This would include a database of research findings on selected monitoring and evaluation studies in mHealth from across the globe, with a particular emphasis on gathering data at the country level....

Without such data, mHealth will not quickly become a part of government policy or be protected by legal guidelines on privacy (the third- and fifth-highest barrier cited, respectively), nor will policy-makers be aware of its possible applications (the second most-cited barrier). If these barriers were resolved, the case for expenditure on mHealth would most likely be bolstered, putting it into perspective among the competing costs that every health system must face (the number one cited barrier to implementation).

Data security is a particularly important issue to address within the area of policy....

Countries will make far greater and faster progress and will save significant sums of money if they adopt global standards. For instance, standards developed in the banking sector for electronic payment processing have been highly successful due to their national and international adoption and cooperative approach. Another such example is the Global Harmonization Task Force, where governments and industry collaborate to create standards for medical technologies....

To this end, WHO and ITU will soon launch an information product called the National eHealth Roadmap Development Toolkit to support Member States in the development of comprehensive eHealth strategies and policies, of which mHealth is a part. Future action of the Observatory and its partners will involve compiling and disseminating information regarding mHealth initiatives, the lessons learnt, evaluations, best practices, and cost-effectiveness to support achieving country health priorities and the MDGs [Millennium Development Goals."