mHealth Generation: An era of bringing healthcare
to smartphones and ensuring its successful implementation
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By Padma Shri Awardee Dr Marthanda Pillai, Honorary
National President Indian Medical Association and Dr KK Aggarwal, President
HCFI & Honorary Secretary General Indian Medical Association
Delegates from almost 60 national medical associations attended the
annual General Assembly of the WMA in Moscow, which was held from 14th
to 17th October. And
all of them insisted on the importance of a few improvisations required for
successfully leveraging Mobile Healthcare in the country. Not only it will help
developing countries, but it will also help in wholistically improving the
healthcare model in developed countries as well.
In today’s time, technology and the world both are
developing at the highest pace. And the best example of this is the evolving
movement of smartphones. Smartphones have made our lives easier by making
things easily accessible and simultaneously saving our time. Not only, they
have successfully transformed our lives but have also brought necessities much
closer. For instance, how well the concept of mHealth (Mobile Health) has
resonated with people from all across the globe.
According to WMA, “Mobile health (mHealth) is used to define the
utilization of state-of-the-art technology in medical care. More specifically,
it has been described as medical and public health practice supported by mobile
devices, such as mobile phones, patient monitoring devices, personal digital
assistants (PDAs), and other devices intended to be used in connection with
mobile devices. It includes voice and short messaging services (SMS),
applications (apps), and the use of the global positioning system (GPS) for the
successful deliverance of medical services.”
mHealth is a broad
concept and encompasses services like measurement or manual input of medical,
physiological, lifestyle, activity and environmental data in order to fulfill
their primary purpose. All this will result in data generation, which can be used
for research into effective healthcare delivery and disease prevention.
However, this data can also be misused if the required security checks are
missed.
Although, there are a plethora of
policies that safeguard the whole idea of mobile health and ensure security as
certain levels including the collection, storage, protection and processing of
data of mHealth users, especially health data. The Government should focus on
educating people about how their personal data is collected, stored, protected
and processed. Prior to any confirmation, consent must be obtained prior from
the users to any disclosure of data to third parties, e.g. researchers,
governments or insurance companies. These steps will help in avoiding any
discrepancies, which may hinder the successful implementation of Mobile Health
technology.
Mobile Health will be huge hit if
monitoring and evaluation are done in accordance to stated rules and
regulations. This will avoid any possibilities in breach of information and as
well as the user’s trust. Additionally, timely monitoring and evaluation will
help in avoiding any misuse of this technology and will also make it easier to measure
the performance records with predetermined standards.
The Mobile Health should be made a
universal concept and the access shouldn’t be denied based on factors like caste,
financial status or lack of technical expertise. And wherever possible, social
or healthcare services should facilitate access to mHealth technologies as part
of basic benefit packages, while taking all the required precautions to
guarantee data security and privacy.
Why is mHealth
important?
·
Mobile
technologies, being easily accessible can provide individual level support to
health care consumers
·
It will promote healthcare,
as apps that can track daily calorie intake, calories burn, exercises done and
much more. All this will educate people on when they should stop
·
It will help people to get a
top physician’s advice in emergency situations like sudden pain in case of
pregnant women
·
With more and more giant tech
players investing in a developing country like India, the smartphone network is
likely to expand. Mobile Health will make it easier for people to access
healthcare services from anywhere at anytime. Although the usage and availability
may vary in some places.
Nowadays, multinational tech giants are making efforts towards
manufacturing low-cost smartphones keeping purchasing power of the Indian
population in mind. More and more people are adapting the smartphone craze, as
they are getting all the hi-tech services and features in minimum amount. Additionally,
these numbers are going to increase in the near future as India continues to
develop and emerge as a global power.
The idea of mHealth has the remarkable potential to
supplement the healthcare delivery model in a country, which has a population
of 1.27 billion people. This will help in improving various fronts like patient
self-management, establishing base for electronic interactions between patients
and physicians and reducing the cost of the healthcare services.
The future of mHealth depends on new coordinated and well
researched the plan of action will be. The
decisions that have been taken before for the implementation of Mobile
healthcare system has been way too experimental in nature and doesn’t have any
guarantee of data security and privacy. The technological arrangement should be
such that it enables in achieving the ultimate desired results. An extensive
plan and comprehensive approach is what is currently required for the
successful integration of this technology into the regular healthcare
infrastructure.
WMA guidelines:
·
Although,
the WMA recognizes the advantages of mHealth, the patient should always opt for
face-to-face interaction and treatment whenever possible
·
The
need to eliminate deficiencies in the provision of care and to improve the
quality of healthcare should be the two main objectives behind mHealth
·
Physicians
and patients both should be aware about the potentials risks of using mHealth
and should follow the guidelines strictly
·
A
physician and a patient should clearly understand the difference between the
use of mHealth for lifestyle purposes and the ones that require medical
supervision and observation
·
The information provided must be clear, reliable and
non-technical, and therefore comprehensible to lay people
·
Concerted work must go into improving the interoperability,
reliability, functionality and safety of mHealth technologies, e.g. through the
development of standards and certification schemes
·
Comprehensive and independent evaluations must be carried
out by competent authorities with appropriate medical expertise on a regular
basis in order to assess the functionality, limitations, data integrity,
security and privacy of mHealth technologies
·
Suitable reimbursement models must be set up in consultation
with national medical associations and healthcare providers to ensure that
physicians receive appropriate reimbursement for their involvement in mHealth
activities
·
A clear legal framework must be drawn up to address the
question of identifying potential liability arising from the use of mHealth
technologies
·
Physicians who use mHealth technologies to deliver
healthcare services should heed the ethical guidelines set out in the WMA
Statement on Guiding Principles for the Use of Telehealth for the Provision of
Health Care
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