Strategies for mHealth research: lessons from 3 mobile intervention studies.
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Date
2015-02-25
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Abstract
The capacity of Mobile Health mHealth technologies to propel healthcare forward is directly linked to the quality of mobile interventions developed through careful mHealth research mHealth research entails several unique characteristics including collaboration with technologists at all phases of a project reliance on regional telecommunication infrastructure and commercial mobile service providers and deployment and evaluation of interventions in the wild with participants using mobile tools in uncontrolled environments In the current paper we summarize the lessons our multi institutional multi disciplinary team has learned conducting a range of mHealth projects using mobile phones with diverse clinical populations First we describe three ongoing projects that we draw from to illustrate throughout the paper We then provide an example for multidisciplinary teamwork and conceptual mHealth intervention development that we found to be particularly useful Finally we discuss mHealth research challenges i e evolving technology mobile phone selection user characteristics the deployment environment and mHealth system bugs and glitches and provide recommendations for identifying and resolving barriers or preventing their occurrence altogether
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Client, Access to information or data, Supply of services, Diversity of treatment options, Continuity of care, Timeliness of care, Mental health, Social and behavior change communication, Health education or promotion, Appointment reminders, Treatment adherence, Disease management, Voice, SMS, Internet, Text, Audio