Patient Monitoring in Mobile Health: Opportunities and Challenges

BACKGROUND In most countries chronic diseases lead to high health care costs and reduced productivity of people in society. The best way to reduce costs of health sector and increase the empowerment of people is prevention of chronic diseases and appropriate health activities management through monitoring of patients. To enjoy the full benefits of E-health, making use of methods and modern technologies is very important. METHODS This literature review articles were searched with keywords like Patient monitoring, Mobile Health, and Chronic Disease in Science Direct, Google Scholar and Pub Med databases without regard to the year of publications. RESULTS Applying remote medical diagnosis and monitoring system based on mobile health systems can help significantly to reduce health care costs, correct performance management particularly in chronic disease management. Also some challenges are in patient monitoring in general and specific aspects like threats to confidentiality and privacy, technology acceptance in general and lack of system interoperability with electronic health records and other IT tools, decrease in face to face communication between doctor and patient, sudden interruptions of telecommunication networks, and device and sensor type in specific aspect. CONCLUSIONS It is obvious identifying the opportunities and challenges of mobile technology and reducing barriers, strengthening the positive points will have a significant role in the appropriate planning and promoting the achievements of the health care systems based on mobile and helps to design a roadmap for improvement of mobile health.