Health and the Mobile Phone
Source: American Journal of Preventive Medicine

Within the next 8 years, annual U.S. expenditure on health care is projected to reach $4 trillion/year, or 20% of the gross domestic product.1 Whether resource consumption of this order of magnitude is sustainable is an open question, but at the very least it suggests the need for population-level solutions for everything from the primary prevention of disease to improving end-of-life care. Ours is a society that often views challenges like this as being solved through the application of technology, and one technology in particular is emerging that may become very important to the delivery of health care and population health: mobile phones. By June 2007 there were 239 million users of mobile phones in the U.S. or 79% of the population,2 and users are highly diverse.3 Mobile phones are beginning to replace landline telephones for some, and except for very young children, may ultimately reach an effective penetration of “one phone: one person” as is already the case in some countries such as Finland.4

This paper provides an overview of the implications of this trend for the delivery of healthcare services and population health. In addition to addressing how mobile phones are changing the way health professionals communicate with their patients, a summary is provided of current and projected technologic capabilities of mobile phones that have the potential to render them an increasingly indispensable personal health device. Finally, the health risks of mobile phone use are addressed, as are several unresolved technical and policy-related issues unique to mobile phones. Because these issues may influence how well and how quickly mobile phones are integrated into health care, and how well they serve the needs of the entire population, they deserve the attention of both the healthcare and public health community.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 12th, 2008 at 10:29 am and is filed under Health and healthcare, Technology, Telecommunications. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.