Mobile health: new technologies, new modes and new era

Perspective Mobile health: new technologies, new modes and new era In the past decade, tremendous developments have been made in mobile communicating technologies, such as fourth generation communication, satellite communication, and wireless network, which, when combined with healthcare, promoted the development of mobile health (mhealth). Mobile health is defined by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) as the use of small, portable computers or telecommunication equipments to meet the needs of consumers for health care or health information services. It is a combination of the biomedical sensor technology, mobile computing technology and networking technology. The surge in mobile communication technologies has transformed the mode and quality of clinical research and healthcare on a global scale. Consequently, mhealth is the new edge on health-care innovation and heralds the arrival of new era of healthcare. Within a surprisingly short period of time, a myriad of applications and devices related to mhealth emerged throughout the world. Especially with the advent of smart mobile devices that support 3 rd and 4 th generation mobile networks for data transporting, mobile computing has been the main attraction of research and business communities. It offers numerous opportunities to create efficient mhealth solutions. There are two modes of mhealth: one is B2B mode which targets medical care personnel , and the other is B2C mode which targets patients. The mhealth applications offer unique opportunities for almost every part of healthcare in pre-, in-and post-hospital periods, including monitoring progress, receiving personalized prompts and support, providing education materials, collecting ecologic data, self-management interventions, and teleconsultaion when and where they are needed [1]. Because of the increase in the number of sub-health population, the aging of the population, and early onset of chronic diseases, more and more of the population attention was paid to mhealth that has gotten a solid foundation for numerous developments of mobile communication devices, such as smart phones and, especially, wearable devices. At the end of 2010, more than 200 million mhealth applications were down-loaded and about 70% of worldwide citizens were interested in access to, at least, one mhealth application. It is predicted that, in 2017, more than 1.7 billion people will have downloaded health APPs with mhealth market revenue of a total of 26 billion dollars [2]. In order to promote and standardize the development of mhealth, many countries have formulated corresponding policy and regulations. As a country with the most mhealth applications, …