Abstract
Our aging population presents a huge challenge especially to our Western (public) health care systems and costs. Recent developments in the area of e/mHealth solutions hold some promise, especially if they are used in lifestyle interventions for several of the main Western diseases. We raise the question how e/mHealth solutions can help improve health by supporting lifestyle interventions? By using a design analysis approach and based on medical literature on health interventions, we raise a number of questions, which span the problem space: Which types of lifestyle interventions are more or less effective in generating health improvements? Which contents and formats of lifestyle interventions hold promise? What could e/mHealth care solutions contribute? System Quality and Information Quality issues are illustrated by using cases. Finally, in the discussion we briefly address the integration with traditional health care provisioning. Regarding the support of health (self-)management, we argue that specific e/mHealth care approaches could offer solutions for current system quality and information quality challenges. These solutions can in turn offer opportunities for care providers to improve the success of their patient recovery programs, and for patients to improve their health significantly. We provide a list of examples for such support provided by e/mHealth care approaches, e.g. integration with the increasing range of health applications in everyday life (on iPhone, Wii, Google, Nike+ and others). A significant number of patients want to actively contribute to improve their health and fight their disease, if they see that it makes a difference. A growing range of e- and m-Health applications is helping them do so.
Recommended Citation
Simons, Luuk P.A. and Hampe, J. Felix, "Exploring e/mHealth Potential for Health Improvement: A Design Analysis for Future e/mHealth Impact" (2010). BLED 2010 Proceedings. 34.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/bled2010/34