Abstract
BackgroundThe application of mobile computing and communication technology is rapidly expanding in the fields of health care and public health. This systematic review will summarise the evidence for the effectiveness of mobile technology interventions for improving health and health service outcomes (M-health) around the world.FindingsTo be included in the review interventions must aim to improve or promote health or health service use and quality, employing any mobile computing and communication technology. This includes: (1) interventions designed to improve diagnosis, investigation, treatment, monitoring and management of disease; (2) interventions to deliver treatment or disease management programmes to patients, health promotion interventions, and interventions designed to improve treatment compliance; and (3) interventions to improve health care processes e.g. appointment attendance, result notification, vaccination reminders.A comprehensive, electronic search strategy will be used to identify controlled studies, published since 1990, and indexed in MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycINFO, Global Health, Web of Science, the Cochrane Library, or the UK NHS Health Technology Assessment database. The search strategy will include terms (and synonyms) for the following mobile electronic devices (MEDs) and a range of compatible media: mobile phone; personal digital assistant (PDA); handheld computer (e.g. tablet PC); PDA phone (e.g. BlackBerry, Palm Pilot); Smartphone; enterprise digital assistant; portable media player (i.e. MP3 or MP4 player); handheld video game console. No terms for health or health service outcomes will be included, to ensure that all applications of mobile technology in public health and health services are identified. Bibliographies of primary studies and review articles meeting the inclusion criteria will be searched manually to identify further eligible studies. Data on objective and self-reported outcomes and study quality will be independently extracted by two review authors. Where there are sufficient numbers of similar interventions, we will calculate and report pooled risk ratios or standardised mean differences using meta-analysis.DiscussionThis systematic review will provide recommendations on the use of mobile computing and communication technology in health care and public health and will guide future work on intervention development and primary research in this field.
Highlights
The application of mobile computing and communication technology is rapidly expanding in the fields of health care and public health
We propose to look all types of mobile technologies and all health outcomes, to provide a broad overview of the M-health sector at this relatively early point in its development
This will allow us to describe the use of different mobile technology functions across a range of healthcare and public health fields, from health behaviour to clinical outcomes such as medication compliance and service use, both to highlight similarities in mechanisms of action for a particular device or function and to suggest where they may be usefully transferred to new areas
Summary
M-health, the use of mobile computing and communication technologies in health care and public health, is a rapidly expanding area of research and practice. Many MEDs have sufficient computing power to support multimedia software applications The combination of these features varies between specific devices and their relative importance will change with the health activity in which they are used. We propose to look all types of mobile technologies and all health outcomes, to provide a broad overview of the M-health sector at this relatively early point in its development This will allow us to describe the use of different mobile technology functions across a range of healthcare and public health fields, from health behaviour to clinical outcomes such as medication compliance and service use, both to highlight similarities in mechanisms of action for a particular device or function and to suggest where they may be usefully transferred to new areas. The objectives of this review are to: (1) describe the uses of mobile computing and communication technologies by patients, healthcare professionals and the general public in the context of health service and public health interventions that have been evaluated in controlled studies; (2) assess the effectiveness of mobile technologies for improving health and health service outcomes in high, middle and low income countries; and (3) describe the acceptability of mobile technologies to patients, healthcare professionals and the general public, in the context of health service and health promotion interventions
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