The Impact of Mobile Technology in the Battle against COVID-19: Successes and Failures

Dear Colleagues,

Mobile technology has undergone rapid development in the last decade and immediately found fertile ground for use in digital healthcare applications.

The advantages for the patient can be many:

• Promoting a healthy lifestyle and improving the awareness, active participation, and motivation of individuals regarding health issues.
• Facilitating and speeding up doctor/patient communication and the personalization of treatments.
• An increase in the autonomy and safety of the patient, who can be monitored and located remotely.
• Improving the efficiency of the health system, reducing the costs of assistance and hospitalization, with remote analysis through monitoring and telemedicine.
• Contribution to research, facilitating the collection of individual and environmental data.
• The expansion of access to treatment, with the possibility of reaching users who otherwise would not have medical assistance.
• The possibility of sharing clinical cases and requesting second opinions in real-time for doctors.

The additional benefits for citizens and health systems in the period of the COVID-19 pandemic are represented by:

• The improvement of social distancing through technological tools in many activities.
• The possibility of carrying out epidemiological monitoring through the apps for digital contact tracing.
• Psychological support through the simple maintenance of social relations thanks to video conferencing and social apps.

Other important aspects to investigate are (a) the relationship of the mobile-born generation with mobile technology and their possible active roles during the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic and (b) the impact of the digital divide that, in some cases, has limited the use of technology, caused either by the limitation of access to resources or by cultural and social barriers.

I invite you to contribute to this issue, which encompasses a broad spectrum ranging from the incredible and unique development of m-health in this period, in the design and development of apps for digital contact tracing, and telemedicine application and e-learning, to the problems hampering the wide diffusion of mobile technology for the fight against COVID-19 caused by the digital divide.

This Special Issue of Healthcare seeks commentaries, original research, short reports, and reviews on challenges in health systems focused on this field.

Dr. Daniele Giansanti
Guest Editor

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