Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
BACKGROUND
mobile communications over the last decade has
provided new opportunities for the promotion of
quality HealthCare. Mobile devices no doubt are
having great impacts on the way we do things.
Mobile health care systems allow the delivery of
accurate medical information anytime anywhere
by means of mobile devices (Rifat et al., 2009).
In recent times, there have been a number of
mHealth initiatives in public health being piloted
and used from one country to another. Among these
initiatives, Short Message Services (SMS) stands
out as being the most promising in terms of its
cost-effectiveness, scalability, convenience, broad
reach, and widespread popularity in the developing
world (Greifinger, 2009). SMS alerts have proven
particularly effective in targeting hard-to-reach
rural dwellers where the absence of HealthCare
amenities, lack of HealthCare workers, and lim-
ited access to health-related information of major
concerns. On a general note, mHealth initiatives
promise to close the information gap that currently
exists for patient data in the developing world,
enabling health workers to measure the effective-
ness of HealthCare programs, allocate resources
more efficiently, and adjust programs and policies
accordingly (Ramswaroop et al., 2010).
In spite of the advances in mobile HealthCare
delivery, there are often situations where patients
with certain medical conditions are unwilling or
unable to reliably go to a physician. Obesity, high
blood pressure, irregular heartbeat, or diabetes,
HIV/AIDS are examples of such common health
problems. AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency
syndrome) is a disease caused by a virus called
HIV (human immunodeficiency virus). Anyone
of any age, race, sex or sexual orientation can
be infected with HIV. In these cases, people are
usually advised to periodically visit their doctors
for routine medical checkups and regularly take
some prescribed drugs. The provision of smarter
and more personalized means through which
patients are able to get medical feedback would
certainly lead to life, time and cost savings (Rifat
et al., 2009).
Ubiquitous health systems which focus on auto-
mated applications that can provide HealthCare to
citizen anywhere/anytime using wired and wire-
less mobile technologies is becoming increasingly
important. Consequently, hand-held devices espe-
cially PDAs and smart phones have been reported
to become increasingly prevalent for health care
delivery (Trevor et al., 2004; Wickramasinghe et
al., 2004; Baldwin, 2005). Research efforts and
the use of wireless communications technologies
to extend the reach, range and maneuverability of
health care applications are covered in (Kyriacou
et al., 2003; Voskarides et al., 2002; Mobile, n.
d; James, 1996; MobilePoint, 2004); Kugean,
2002; Qureshi, 2005; Robert, 2005; Aura, 2006;
Kim, 2005; Tang, 2004). Other research work
that demonstrate the feasibility, convenience, and
efficiency of using handheld devices in enhanc-
ing care delivering in areas such as transferring
clinical data (Kim, 2005; Tang, 2004), electronic
messaging systems (Wojceichowski et al., 2006;
Wojciech et al., 2008; ng, 2007) have also been
widely reported. The increasing adoption of
mobile technology devices such as PDAs, cell
phones, and laptops, for HealthCare (mobile
health care) delivery is due to the flexibility and
portability they offer to the physicians than some
more computational desktop computers. In ad-
dition, hand-held devices and the applications
bundled within them are significantly cheaper and
require very little training unlike most PC-based
alternatives. Furthermore, mobile devices support
features that allow remote users to synchronize
personal databases and provide access to network
services such as wireless e-mail, Web browsing,
and Internet access, thus meeting the mobility
needs of patients or medical practitioners who
are always on the move.
All across the world, the shortage of health
care personnel continues to present great concerns
for health care systems. However, in the develop-
ing world, the explosive growth and adoption of
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