The Evolution of E-Health – Mobile Technology and mHealth

Abstract

Medicine has always been an information intensive field from the first days of practice, when pearls of wisdom were passed along the generations as word of mouth. Throughout history, informatics has been an integral part of medicine, facilitating the storage and accession of vast amounts of data. This has come to the culmination of present day medical practice, which is built on the foundations of Electronic-Health (E-Health). New information is rapidly disseminated through electronic access to medical journals and other relevant sources of information. Patient data is increasingly stored electronically, and reference information including textbooks are stored electronically in websites. The E-Health revolution digitized the world, and medicine has benefited immensely. Whilst having this information available electronically has numerous benefits, the delivery of this information to medical staff has been less than ideal, requiring doctors to be tied down to devices such as immobile desktop computers. The next stage in digital informatics is to gain rapid access in both storing and creating material in a convenient manner; and smartphones have been an instrumental tool in this evolution. Smartphones have a number of characteristics which give them an advantage over other technologies, such as portability, constant internet connectivity, enough computing power to run complex applications and the simple fact that the majority of doctors have one in their pocket. In June 2011, the penetration of wireless devices amongst the US population was recorded at 102%, meaning that there were more wireless devices than the total population. 1 Whilst smartphones do not account for all wireless devices, it is estimated over 75% of medical staff use a smartphone. 2