An Editorial Review of Mobile Health: Implications for the US Military Health System.

Abstract

The United States Military Health System provides healthcare to a diverse patient population throughout the world. There are three distinct challenges that the Military Health System faces. (1) Providers have varying degrees of clinical training expertise and may be called upon to practice outside their usual scope of care. (2) There is geographic isolation of patients and providers with limited resources while stationed overseas. (3) Patients are at higher risk of breaks in continuity of care because of permanent change of duty stations, deployments, and retirement. In this article we review the history of mobile health in both the civilian and military sectors, and how mobile health may be used to address the challenges unique to the United States Military Health System. There are many good initiatives in military mobile health, however they are decentralized and different across the services and military treatment facilities. We describe some military specific success stories with improving patient access to care and disease specific mobile health applications implemented. Mobile health is a powerful platform which can help deliver standardized care in missions around the world and improve access to care for patients at military treatment facilities in the United States. The United States Military Health System would benefit greatly from creating universal mobile health applications to assist providers in patient access to care, military mission readiness, and disease specific modules. Future resources should be dedicated to the development of a mobile health application pool that is universally implemented across services to improve quality of care delivered at home and in theater by military providers.