Future Use
There are opportunities for the inclusion of mHealth to improve public health. The future for mHealth remains bright and may include fundamental and great changes in the existing health care paradigm in a better and more convenient way.
Medical apps spread quickly in app market and diversity of their products are vast. In the article called “FDA regulation of mobile health technologies” by Hamel, Cortez, Cohen, and Kesselheim, 2014, p 372) Some sources are indicating that more than 97,000 mHealth apps were available as of March 2013, according to one estimate the number of mHealth apps, downloads, and users almost doubles every year. Some other predict that by 2018 there could be 1.7 billion mHealth users globally. Therefore, mHealth technologies could have an extreme effect on patient care and health improvement.
Smartwatches from HTC and Apple and other companies, would open the doors for better results in health related data. Since it would regularly be in contact with our skin, a watch could potentially gather more accurate data on stress levels and offer continuous heart rate monitoring.
Despite the fact that mHealth technologies develop so fast, never forget that all these devices may not result in a quick improvement process. “I do believe that this is the future of healthcare, but you can’t just throw the technology out there and hope it will cure everything,” says Steinhubl.
Conclusion
Overall, the principle function of mHealth products is improving health outcomes, reducing medical errors, avoiding costly medical care, and easy access to care. Like other digital devices, mHealth has some advantages and disadvantages. In one hand mHealth tries to improve health by providing home-based therapies (palliative care), tutorials, and health care information, and bringing down any risk of an emergency situation by monitoring heart rate and measuring blood pressure regularly or tracking insulin in diabetics. On the other hand, it might have some negative possible outcomes like some apps do not work accurately by miscalculation (overestimate or underestimate). Also some apps don’t have high security which in some cases reveals users’ medical data.
As a medical point of view, applications that are under supervision of FDA (Food and Drug Administration) are highly recommended which means before using any medical app, first make sure if they have FDA approval.
In conclusion, the way that mHealth works is impressive and it can be used by any one in anywhere for any purposes from daily diet and exercise control by measuring your weight, height or tracking your daily steps to communicating properly with physician or medical aims (measuring blood pressure, tracking insulin dose, etc.) in order to prevent unnecessary hospitalization. In other words, Smartphone applications are a cost-effective approach in providing timely and effective care in today’s world.