If you follow the mHealth blogs and groups on LinkedIn you’ll see a constant debate about where mHealth is in out existing health services. I’ve been looking at some of the applications which are already in use within the NHS. As yet, there’s no central policy for mHealth, and it’s debatable whether much of the good practice using mHealth is even acknowledged, but that doesn’t mean it’s not providing benefit.
Much of mHealth is invisible. It’s not the high tech monitoring that we find in glossy medical device brochures, but far simpler, everyday applications. Many of these use SMS, but mHealth extends through voice and video, and we’re already seeing local use of applications on iPhones and Android. However, there is little coordination of deployment, and almost all that is happening is as a result of local initiatives.
Let’s look at some of the examples.