Mobile Health Interventions: A Critical Evaluation in Healthcare

This essay critically evaluates the role of mobile health (mHealth) interventions in healthcare service delivery, particularly in New Zealand. It emphasizes the increasing use of mobile devices like cell phones and personal digital assistants to facilitate timely information delivery and improve healthcare access, especially for disadvantaged groups. The essay highlights how mHealth interventions, such as text message-based smoking cessation programs and adolescent depression prevention, can positively change behaviors and reduce healthcare costs. It further discusses the benefits of mHealth in strengthening patient-centered care, improving service efficiency, enabling remote monitoring, and transforming healthcare from traditional hospital settings to home-based care. The essay concludes that mobile health is a crucial innovation with significant impacts on healthcare, including better service delivery in rural areas and improved data collection.

Running head: MOBILE HEALTH 1
Evaluation of mobile health
Student’s Name
Professor’s Name
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Importance of mobile health
The research paper selected for discussion and critical evaluation relates to mobile health
in healthcare service delivery in New Zealand. According to the study, mobile health is a
practice in the public and private health sector which advocates and recognizes the use of mobile
devices like, personal digital assistants, monitoring devices, cell phones among other devices that
are wireless. The introduction of mobile health is crucial because people are able to connect with
each other through the use of use of mobile phones irrespective of where they are located.
Mobile phones are portable gadgets which facilitate timely delivery of information. Mobile
health has been integrated into the daily provision of health services because people use mobile
phones to communicate every day. The use of text messages is also reported to increase in the
recent past among the people in the health sector. This means the program of mobile health is
now used to deliver service to the disadvantaged groups in the community (Whittaker, Merry,
Dorey, & Maddison, 2012).
A mobile phone can be used to effect a positive change of behavior. The use of text
message to enlighten individuals on the negative effect of smoking compelled them to abandon
smoking. Research has shown that mobile phones have a significant impact on health care
interventions and processes. For instance, an intervention for universal depression prevention for
the people in the adolescent stage was established using cell phone multimedia messaging. The
use of mobile health in carrying out health intervention is beneficial in that it helps in minimizing
the cost of providing health care to the patient (Silva, Rodrigues, de la Torre Díez, López-
Coronado, & Saleem, 2015).
The use of mobile phones provides an easy access to health services and improves the
mobility of these services. It offers vast chances for the healthcare provider to address the

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pressing health challenges. This makes healthcare cheaper, more accessible, better, and faster.
Mobile Health helps to strengthen as well as improving the healthcare service delivery from a
traditional model to a tangible and a patient-centered model. Mobile Health is considered to be a
link to better service delivery to the patients because health care provider can easily connect with
the patients they have provided healthcare to evaluate and monitor their progress. The
availability and access to mobile health while providing health care has transformed the service
delivery hence better results have been obtained (Agarwal et al 2016).
To sum up, mobile health complements ongoing transformation in the healthcare sector
that is moving health care services from the hospital setting to a home setting. Mobile phones are
used to integrate and rationalize the services in the applicable areas, considering the patient's
requirements. In addition, mobile health plays an important function in empowering people
receiving healthcare. The health care providers give the necessary information and instructions to
the patients using mobile phones which helps them to manage and monitor their condition and
detect any side effects associated with treatment while they are in their homes. Consequently,
mobile health has helped in seeking new health care techniques, which necessitate a change of
care from inpatient care delivery to outpatient care. It has also enabled and improved care service
delivery in rural areas and other areas where health care providers cannot easily access. There are
several crucial benefits which accrue to the health sector, they include improving the efficiency
of service, helping in the collection of accurate &reliable and reduction in cost. Therefore,
mobile health is an important invention which has remarkable impacts in the health sector
(Weinstein et al, 2014).

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References
Agarwal, S., LeFevre, A. E., Lee, J., L’Engle, K., Mehl, G., Sinha, C., & Labrique, A. (2016).
Guidelines for reporting of health interventions using mobile phones: mobile health
(mHealth) evidence reporting and assessment (mERA) checklist. Bmj, 352, i1174.
Silva, B. M., Rodrigues, J. J., de la Torre Díez, I., López-Coronado, M., & Saleem, K. (2015).
Mobile-health: A review of current state in 2015. Journal of biomedical informatics, 56,
265-272.
Weinstein, R. S., Lopez, A. M., Joseph, B. A., Erps, K. A., Holcomb, M., Barker, G. P., &
Krupinski, E. A. (2014). Telemedicine, telehealth, and mobile health applications that
work: opportunities and barriers. The American journal of medicine, 127(3), 183-187.
Whittaker, R., Merry, S., Dorey, E., & Maddison, R. (2012). A development and evaluation
process for mHealth interventions: examples from New Zealand. Journal of health
communication, 17(sup1), 11-21.