Abstract
ABSTRACTThe rapid increase in mobile phone use and other telecommunication technologies in health care during the past decade has paved the way for optimism. mHealth (mobile health) initiatives need to be integrated into national health systems and priorities and fit into the system that the country has already invested in. Partnership between government, regional governments, health care systems, Community Health Workers, the private sector and universities is considered as a precondition for success. In turn, this requires strategic and integrative policy decisions on the national/regional level to be defined in the action plans as concrete steps. Decision makers are calling for scale-up plans to be in place even in the pilot phases. Hope is expressed that the initial joy and curiosity that new technology generates in the implementation phase will be transferred to routine work. Standards and a common technical architecture that enables interoperability and upscaling are key issues. Based on publications on policy and national strategies, this paper highlights some key areas for decision makers’ role and expectations with regard to mHealth. The paper will also report some mHealth experiences from Ethiopia, Ghana and Sweden.
Highlights
MHealth is:a service or application that involves voice or data communication for health purposes between a central point and remote locations
We do not differentiate between eHealth and mHealth since both are used in describing digital health care development
The aim of this paper is to explore policymakers’ roles and expectations with regard to mHealth/ eHealth with the main focus being on LMICrelevant aspects
Summary
To help keep the implementation on track, the strategy identified several critical building blocks for the first four years, including eHealth coordinating, regulatory frameworks, mHealth pilots, broadband connectivity, an eHealth human resource capacity development programme, a functional Telemedicine pilot, initiation of electronic public interaction with the health sector, an electronic patient records system piloted in selected health facilities and a Web-based District Health Information System [17]. Digitalization of health care in Sweden faces many challenges, including integration of health data collected by individuals using either remote monitoring systems or mobile devices, use of digital decision support to develop personalized medicine, and implementation of new e-services (specially to integrate social care and health care services)
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