Mobile health in urology: The good, the bad and the ugly

Abstract

Our aim is to present the current position of mobile health (mHealth) and the delivery of healthcare services via mobile communication devices in urology. We conducted a literature review of urology mHealth papers on PubMed. Results indicate that mHealth is becoming ubiquitous in contemporary healthcare systems. Although its potential has been shown, urology lags behind other areas, representing just 0.1% of the 300,000 available medical apps in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. Furthermore, there is a lack of expert healthcare professional involvement in app development. To avoid harm, it is critical that the scientific accuracy, patient privacy, and user safety of urology mHealth applications are assured. This is because there is no globally enforced medical app regulation, compulsory scientific guidelines, nor mandatory industry standards. Urologists, either individually or via scientific organizations, should have a pivotal position in the design, development, review, certification, and recommendation of apps. mHealth holds great potential in urology, as it can aid multiple stakeholders: citizens, patients, healthcare professionals, health organizations, and public authorities (e.g., Ministry of Health). Even though it is mostly used to improve existing medical activities at present, the future will include revolutionary and ground-breaking technology solutions. This innovative field should be seen by urologists as an opportunity to provide greater care to our patients and better tools and knowledge to our peers.