Spotlight on mHealth (Clinical Mobility)

mHealth (also written as m-health or mobile health)

Where do consumers go for health services and medical information? For over 280 million wireless subscribers in the United States, the answer is as close as their mobile phone. In the past decade, the majority of Americans have come to rely on the Internet as a vital health and medical information resource. These consumers are now searching for and downloading applications on their mobile devices and the demand for mobile health resources is exploding. But the efficacies afforded by these advances and promises of mHealth are not only for consumers. Yes, remote monitoring, electronic prescriptions, and electronic alerts for disease control are all major advances, however, doctors, nurses and clinicians stand to gain tremendous advantages by adopting mobile technologies into their daily routines, the new term is “Clinical Mobility” and 2011 is the year that widespread adoption is expected.

mHealth offers a comprehensive and integrated approach to healthcare. After “meaningful use”, Clinical Mobility is the hottest topic in the industry and healthcare providers are finally being given the opportunity to reap the benefits of using mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers to assist them in providing quality of care. For example; the ability for a doctor to review lab results while away from the hospital and communicate back to the nursing staff regarding his findings creates a huge advancement in expediting treatment and provides a profound effect on continuity of care. Additionally, the ability to collaborate and remain fully connected to the treatment of patients while on the go affords overworked doctors, nurses and clinicians such an improvement in workflow, patient outcomes can only improve.

The mHealth field operates on the premise that technology integration within the health sector has the great potential to improve decision-making by health professionals (and patients) and enhance healthcare quality by improving access to medical and health information and facilitating instantaneous communication in places where this was not previously possible. It follows that the increased use of technology can help reduce health care costs by improving efficiencies in the health care system. mHealth is also home to the idea that there exists a powerful potential to advance clinical care and public health services by facilitating an increase in both communication and collaboration across the entire spectrum of healthcare professionals through the use of mobile technology.