The Use of Mobile Health Technology in Primary Care - A Overview

Introduction

Primary care deals with disease prevention, early diagnosis, investigations, and affordable and safe treatment. In the primary healthcare sector, communication links the service provider and the patients. Mobile technology renders suitable platforms of communication for the healthcare system. Therefore, mobile health (mHealth) technology has led to adequate time management and reduced costs starting from hospital visits to doctor appointments. With technological advancements and an increasing internet consumer number, mobiles provide new opportunities for patient care. Also, these are instrumental in combining different healthcare sectors and mobile technology. Thus, mHealth technology can become a powerful medical tool to support the various levels of healthcare.

How Has Mobile Technology Evolved in Telemedicine?

Telemedicine (TM) provides distant clinical services through live communication between the patient and healthcare professionals. Also, TM allows healthcare professionals to assess, diagnose, and manage patients from a distance. Telemedicine comprises telemonitoring, interactive and asynchronous telemedicine.

1. Telemonitoring permits healthcare professionals to evaluate the vital signs and activities of the patient from a distance. However, it applies to high-risk and older patients.

2. Patients and doctors use interactive telemedicine to communicate using mobile consultations and video conferences.

3. Healthcare professionals share lab and imaging reports, videos, and data with other specialists through asynchronous telemedicine.

What Are the Advantages of Mobile Health Technology in Primary Care?

mHealth benefits patients and primary healthcare physicians equally in the following ways.

1. Electronic health records (EHRs), artificial intelligence (AI), and streaming devices are technologies integrated with TM. They help physicians in live patient monitoring and adjust treatment plans. Also, there is increased income from limited staff and office space.

2. Senior citizens and older patients in remote zones can access services from home. Hence, there is cheaper cost per patient and cost-saving.

3. Conditions needing in-person examination, such as skin and eye infections, can be managed by video consultation with the doctor for diagnosis, lab tests, and treatment through mobile applications. Furthermore, the doctor can give electronic (e) -prescriptions to save time and improve communication. The doctor can conveniently review the past medical records of patients and can renew the prescription from their comfort zone. The e-prescriptions can also be coupled with EHR. The EHR gives detailed patient information and the complete treatment picture.

4. The TM model of healthcare can be significant in situations that demand social distancing, such as the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, to minimize exposure. mHealth plays a pivotal role in surveillance for COVID-19 due to the increase in cases. Inadequate contact tracing mechanisms are an obstacle to preventing the spread. Research shows that contact monitoring through mHealth can reduce COVID-19 spread. Also, mHealth can be instrumental in tracking any epidemic and leading people to seek healthcare services and monitoring.

What Are the Applications of Mobile Technology for Primary Healthcare?

Mobile phone technology can efficiently support primary healthcare at various stages.

1. Disease Prevention:Coordinated communication is paramount to preventing and controlling disease. mHealth technology greatly contributes to disease-prevention and immunization programs, collection of disease information, and motivating people for compliance. A smartphone can comprehensively extract data from the patient using AI and predesigned guides. Further, one can use the standardized “to-do list” and get care through better maintenance of medical records.

• Communicable Diseases: mHealth technology can aid in preventing communicable diseases (such as COVID-19) by helping with social distancing, lockdown, contact tracing, and quarantine measures. Various studies have positively reviewed mHealth uses in global epidemic or pandemic outbreaks.

• Non-communicable Diseases: mHealth technology aids in the prevention and treatment of non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Among the most frequent NCDs, mHealth applications have shown success in diabetes mellitus (DM), hypertension, and cardiovascular disease management.

2. Community Health Programs:Primary healthcare system and community-based participation of patients is complementary. mHealth technology contributes to community health programs. Some examples are a decline in maternal and child death rates and communicable and NCDs burden decrease. Such goals have been attained by improving the mHealth knowledge of community health workers (CHWs).They are involved in activities organized by the public health department, such as maternal, newborn, and child health programs (MNCH), nutrition and vaccination programs, and disease surveillance. Moreover, adequate mHealth technology can improve healthcare workers’ productivity and reduce their workload.

3. Mobile Health Applications: Mobiles have paved the way in medical practice due to medical software applications' availability. These applications are software programs designed on mobiles and computers for assigned tasks. mHealth technology has profited healthcare professionals (HCPs) through various healthcare applications. The applications can be used as medical tools with clinical decision-making for improved patient care. They can aid in:

• Estimate calories and monitor pulse or heart rate.

• Communicate with doctors in an emergency.

• Disaster reporting disasters with automatic transmission of location and time.

• Use AI to help in diagnosing and predicting diseases.

• Adverse drug reaction detection or pointing out drug-drug interactions.

• Patient follow-ups and monitoring of treatment progress.

• Sharing results with patients after their hospital discharge.

• Credible real-time data with the patient’s consent for healthcare research.

What Are the Challenges Faced by Mobile Health Technology in Primary Care?

Certain challenges and barriers obstruct the global mHealth adoption and success. These barriers need to be overcome for an umbrella coverage of mHealth technology.

1. Data Security:There are privacy concerns and social stigma in sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), psychiatric illnesses, and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) patients. Further, there is a lack of authentication and the threat of hacking.

2. Different Operating Systems: Heterogeneity in the operating system (OS) (Microsoft Windows, iOs, or Android) is a barrier to data transfer.

3. Difficult Discoverability: Poor discoverability renders mHealth applications complex and non-user-friendly.

4. Mobile Addiction: Mobile overuse among patients can cause addiction.

5. Use in Developing Countries: A large-scale acceptance of mHealth technology is difficult due to illiteracy in developing countries.

6. Standard Maintenance: There are varied stakeholders for the maintenance of mHealth applications, security, transparency, safety, and updates. Therefore, apart from these hurdles, funding and cost must be addressed.

Conclusion

mHealth is a powerful technology with the potential to alter the face of primary healthcare services. For challenges such as data security and privacy, it is desirable to implement new mHealth technologies for reliable, accurate, and optimal patient care; mHealth has pinned high hopes beyond communication among health providers and patients. Many studies highlight a bright future for the health sector through mHealth technology. However, universal standardized algorithms are in the stage of imagination rather than development or use. Still, one must note that this technology has provided opportunities to improve its applications for future health crises.