The effectiveness of M-health technologies for improving health and health services: a systematic review protocol.
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Date
2010-11-10
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Abstract
BACKGROUND The 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 FINDINGS To 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 DISCUSSION This 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