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Language and Literacy Challenges
real-time analysis of physiological data on a mobile
device, allowing medical staff to monitor patients'
data without being near them physically. In the
developing world, the expertise to analyze such
data is found lacking. Existing medical staff is not
trained to perform analysis of such data such as a
rural inhabitant's insulin levels recorded through
a glucose monitor that transmits this data through
a mobile phone to a health care provider. Proper
analysis can reduce hospital visits and enable af-
fordable access to medical care right at home. One
of the major challenges in developing countries is
that up-to-date health trend data is not maintained
and is not in electronic form. The infrastructure
to properly analyze certain patients and diseases
based on their medical history is found to be
non-existent at times. Significant effort needs
to be spent to standardize health records across
the board in a format and structure that can be
analyzed effectively. Staff needs to be trained to
analyze these records, provide suitable and real-
time feedback when required, and validate the
effectiveness of their response. It is also necessary
to equip remote patients with the right tools in
the form of mobile devices and health monitor-
ing apparatuses such as glucose monitoring and
blood pressure monitoring devices. A significant
effort also has to be spent on standardizing the
reporting process and reaching a consensus on
which software and hardware tools to use to
maximize effectiveness of the reporting process.
Many of the challenges facing the adoption and
implementation of electronic health records also
apply to mobile personal health records. Provid-
ers that eventually need to be involved have to be
assured that information from the electronic and/
or mobile personal health records will be avail-
able for analysis at all times and that they will be
able to access data much more efficiently. Such
information will be more readily available than a
manual data-entry system for the same records.
In most parts of the developing world the people
who are most in need of medical support are
also illiterate. That is, these applications need to
communicate with their users in a language that
can be easily understood in a local language. This
challenge also needs to be addressed if mHealth
applications are to be successfully deployed.
Helping people with poor reading skills to access
health-related information on a mobile-based
application is a daunting task. Applications that
can use alternatives such as voice messaging
for such a target population can be a possible
solution. More research needs to be carried out
along these lines, e.g., in some applications, text
enlargement or graphics can be used for people
with poor literacy skills or visually impaired
people (many older people who require medical
aid fall in this category), to guide them in medical
matters such as which prescription drugs to take.
Companies providing mHealth technology need
to invest significantly in research so that all sec-
tions of society can benefit from these mHealth
innovations. In terms of local language support,
there are translation processes that need to be fol-
lowed to maximize the quality of information in
a language appropriate to a targeted population.
A good example of such an application is one
that allows a phone call to be made (or received)
in a particular language. Such a translation pro-
cess has the potential to bridge the language and
literacy gap.
Structural Challenges
There are also structural barriers to the growth of
mHealth. In developing nations, there is a lack of
players with the required expertise to undertake
mHealth initiatives, since existing organizations
do not have a track record implementing these
kinds of applications. The mHealth revolution
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