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Resource Overview
  • Rationale
  • Challenges
  • Approach

Mobile health (mHealth) tools have the potential to play a pivotal role in fostering a sense of greater patient engagement within underserved populations. By facilitating patient use of mHealth applications in collaboration with electronic health record (EHR) and personal health record (PHR) systems there is an opportunity to empower individuals to take a more active role toward managing their health conditions.

The proliferation of consumer mobile health applications and devices is creating new opprotunities for engaging patients in their care and leaves little doubt as to the impact that these tools will have on the way that people manage their health, health information, and health communications with their care providers, family and friends. This shift to increased self-management of health by consumers will change a patient’s relationship with their doctor and the way healthcare is practiced.
The current laws and standards in place to ensure patient’s privacy and health information security will need further review to determine whether mobile health technologies create unique situations that are not yet addressed. This poses many challenges for health centers as to how best to support patient use of these tools and ways in which to incorporate them into their own clincial support systems.

Mobile health characterizes a shift in the point of care for the patient. The point of care has classically been located at the hospital or clinic. Mobile health is beginning to shift this model so that the point of care is more frequently a matter of where the person happens to be located at that time, consequently providing opportunities for more timely care. It is also important to note that these tools help to increase the accessibility of Healthcare to populations where direct access to Healthcare professionals is limited and so health management is more frequently left in the hands of the consumer.

The tools provide in this resource cover a range of different mobile health tools, strategies, and guidelines for consideration as Health Centers seek to leverage these technologies to better engage and activate their patients.

Mobile Health Resources
Developing a Framework for Evaluating the Patient Engagement, Quality, and Safety of Mobile Health Applications
The Commonwealth Fund
/ Categories: Electronic Patient Engagement, Mobile Health, Evaluation of Engagement and Satisfaction

Developing a Framework for Evaluating the Patient Engagement, Quality, and Safety of Mobile Health Applications

A report from the Commonwealth Fund

From the Commonwealth Fund report Background section:

"Growing evidence suggests that health care is more efficient and effective when patients are actively engaged in their treatment.1 Engaged, or activated, patients collaborate with their providers, are treated with respect and dignity, receive information related to their care, and are involved in decision-making.2 Two separate reviews commissioned by the Institute of Medicine and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation found that chronic disease self-management and promotion of patient engagement are essential to successful care management programs targeting patients with high needs and high costs and are associated with improved quality of life, functional autonomy, and decreased hospital use.3

Mobile health applications, or apps, designed for smartphones can help empower high-need, high-cost patients to self-manage their health.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans now own smartphones, and ownership is rising among older adults (27%) and those with low household incomes (50%).4 Moreover, community health centers and clinics perceive mobile health technologies as an ideal tool to engage their patient populations in chronic disease management.5

In this issue brief, we describe criteria for evaluating mobile apps for high-need, high-cost populations based on their potential to improve patient engagement and on their quality and safety. We then discuss results of our efforts to test and refine those criteria using a sample of apps available through the Apple iOS and Android app stores."

 

Use the link provided below to access the full report...

Resource Links

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Tags: patient engagement mobile health patient safety evaluation quality digital health high-need high-cost
Intended Audiencehealthcare researchers, patient engagement team, health center staff

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Acknowledgements

This resource collection was cultivated and developed by the HITEQ team with valuable suggestions and contributions from HITEQ Project collaborators.

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