Incorporating guidelines for use of mobile technologies in health research and practice.

This commentary aims to create initial recommendations to guide researchers' decisions on the development and use of mobile technologies for public health research. We recommend that mobile technologies for public health research should be scalable and sustainable; draw on social, psychological and/or behavioral theoretical models; be able to be integrated with multiple communication devices; incorporate social network and/or geographic metrics and take a community-based participatory approach to development and implementation. All of these approaches are discussed.