The Journal of mHealth Vol 1 Issue 1 (Feb 2014) | Page 37

EPHA Briefing on Mobile Health
and processed via mHealth tools
has legitimately been indicated
as a crucial point of concern [35].
Transparency about privacy and
confidentiality rules is clearly critical for building public trust, while
interoperability is essential for scaling up projects.
A particular barrier to using mobile technologies for data collection and disease surveillance is
the implementation of multiple
health-related data collection systems, flows and platforms within
the health system that can track
information directly as health services are delivered. Currently there
is no standard practice for this and
incoherence reigns at system and at
policy level, e.g. regarding data collected at community level, within
public and private health facilities,
within national and district health
reporting information systems,
and within systems specifically designated for surveillance [36]. There
are many mHealth application systems and platforms (both open
source and proprietary) but there
is still no common ‘architecture’. A
key challenge is that there is almost
never a single owner of all the information to ensure interoperability.

SOLUTIONS
Research undertaken by PwC
(2012) [37] has shown that mHealth
is beginning to embrace the following principles:
»

Interoperability–interoperable with sensors and other
mobile/non-mobile devices to
share vast amounts of data with
other applications, such as elec-

tronic health records and existing healthcare plans;
»

Integration –integrated into
existing activities and workflows of providers and patients
to provide the support needed
for new behaviours;

»

Intelligence–offering problem-solving ability to provide
real –time qualitative solutions
based in existing data in order
to realise productivity gains;

»

Socialisation–act as a hub by
sharing information across a
broad community to provide
support, coaching, recommendations and other forms of assistance;

»

Outcomes–provide a return
investment in terms of cost, access and quality of care based
on healthcare objectives; and

»

Engagement–enabling
patient’s involvement and the provision