Taking mHealth Solutions to Scale: Enabling Environments and Successful Implementation

Abstract

Introduction The increasing availability and capacity of mobile devices is transforming accessibility and coverage in the health field. Globally, there are nearly 6 billion mobile cellular subscriptions with penetration reaching 80% in the developing world. Particularly in low and middle-income countries, the use of mobile telecommunication and multimedia technologies, known as mobile health or mHealth, can improve the quality of care and enhance efficiency of service delivery within healthcare systems. In particular, mHealth innovations offer tremendous opportunities to improve access to health-related information in hard to reach areas. Such opportunities include increased operational efficiencies, low cost delivery, as well as enhanced diagnosis, treatment and tracking of diseases. Like many resources and devices in the larger field of health informatics, mHealth solutions can also improve consumer access to and control over information they receive about health and can help to advance knowledge and skills while reducing complexity. mHealth tools can provide improved access to healthcare while creating cost efficiency and increasing capacity and quality of healthcare.