Question:-

Research the components of technology as it relates to mHealth and assess how technology is promoting or hindering the advancement of mHealth.

Answer:-

Components of technology relating to mHealth

Mobile health is supported by key technological elements like personal digital assistants, patient monitoring devices, mobile phones and further wireless devices. Use of mobile phones has been helpful in providing patients with rapid access to the healthcare provider and care leading to key improvement in medication adherence. The use of patient monitoring devices has been useful for the healthcare providers to deliver excellent quality care to large no. of patients at a time with lesser risk of burnout, lower costs with higher efficiency. The wearable or remote devices for patient monitoring involve non-invasive remote monitoring device, which measures basic physiological parameters along with transmitting patient details wirelessly to healthcare professionals (Rich & Miah, 2017). Personal Digital Assistants (PDA) are regarded as key mobile tool that has been used broadly for different purposes within healthcare practice as well as the extent of its usage by healthcare personnel for ensuring effectiveness in mHealth is increasing for accessing to updated details regarding patients’ health and provide care from remote areas.

Advancements

One of the vital instruments for mobile health is extended networks. It relates with the advancement in technology, which provides savings in cost, opportunity and minimum time to deal with it. Both who provides the medical treatment and the patient get advantage through it (Al et al., 2016). The advantage of mobile health can be simply focused on cell phones. In fact, it is easy for the patient to track its own health simply by accessing their records through online mode.

Mobile technology is advancing day by day so people are aware of their health on a frequent basis. At the same time, the technology is different to the electronic health record. It provides the user about their data in 24*7 hours.  However, the mobile health has allowed the researcher for easy treatment through different modes of technology. This gives power to the individual to control their outcomes according to their satisfaction level (Kao, C & Kawachi, 2017). The initiative of mobile health states that the improved system and efficiency, which is related with the data collection and communication process, are completed in a short span of time. The older method of pen and paper was no doubt good but consuming more time both in collecting the records and finding it however was not so easy. There was no section from where the records can be viewed instantly. It is an advantage and a system of biometric, which allows safe protocol with coded password. However, employees can even use their fingerprint, voice recognition to unlock the password. At the same time, the retina scanning is also coded as a password form.

Challenges

There are different challenges, which are related with this mental health of patients where they are confused regarding the data, which are, accepted online (Huh, J & Kim, 2019). However different age have different issues old age patients are not aware of this technological field and take more time to adjust in it. Issues are related to the unfortunate and well-being of the decision. Former personal data and confidential issues are creating chaos in the medical environment. Some people think that information in an online system is easy to access if shared with another person. But this is not the right way to approach any record of a particular person because it will be considered a breach in privacy data (Vable et al., 2019). According to my opinion I totally support mobile health and advancement in technology. Patients form terminals have been seen to undergo large amounts of information misuse. However steps must be taken for those people who are not acquainted with this phenomena and concern for the staff and public who are related with the HIVAA for privacy breach related work. However hackers are sometimes from patients itself who risk the life of a patient through changing the documents. But due to the advancement of technology compared to that pen and paper, today things can be managed and work better than before.

Cost and Access

Related to access and cost, though upfront charges and bills of improvement of the healthcare system or provision of further advance technologies remains overwhelming financially in long-run income shall outperform costs subsequent set time duration. Therefore, it’s in the providers’ best stake to make investment in the medical technology advancements along with mobile technology, computer system and even other elements associated with communication or imaging. Regrettably, in context of access for like the mobile devices, limited-service regions or weak signals remain, which take place and could interfere or inhibit actually with the patient care thereby formulation of this kind of objectionable technology within remote areas (Miah, Gammack & Hasan, 2017). I personally believe that CPOE and EHR must be needed in most of the services since it possesses fail-safes developed for helping to manage protection of the patients while developing documentation, applicability and other advantages to their prime provider as well as outsourcing care when needed.