The Health, Social and Economic Impact of mHealth in Low- and Middle-income Countries
A special issue of International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (ISSN 1660-4601). This special issue belongs to the section "Digital Health".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 October 2021) | Viewed by 4066
Special Issue Editors
Interests: global health policy; health systems; health equity; gender; poverty; digital health; health decision science
Interests: health inequities; global health; poverty; neighborhood and community; health policy, infectious diseases
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
mHealth (mobile health) is defined as “the use of mobile technologies for health” and is considered a part of eHealth (electronic health) or the more recently introduced umbrella term, dHealth (digital health). mHealth has been receiving increasing attention in low- and middle-income countries as well as in high-income countries, due to the opportunities for improved access to care and other potential benefits in resource-poor settings. As such, mHealth has been applied to diverse types of interventions using varying types of mobile technologies in different settings. Despite the promising potential of mHealth in low-resource settings, in order to persuade policy-makers towards the extended implementation of mHealth interventions, it is particularly crucial to comprehensively assess the impact of mHealth in low- and middle-income countries. While there has recently been an increasing number of studies on evaluating the impact of mHealth in this setting, a majority have focused on health impact, with a relatively small portion on social issues such as equity, gender, and environment, and few on economic impact. Furthermore, for the studies focused on health impact, it is reported that evidence is still limited, that the available results are mixed, and that the comparability across studies is often questioned due to the non-standardized types of outcomes reported, complex nature of mHealth interventions, and weak study designs. This situation warrants more comprehensive and rigorous research for low- and middle-income country settings. In this light, this Special Issue invites a broad range of contributions that address the abovementioned issues—we especially welcome papers that assess the extended impact of mHealth on diverse areas from different perspectives and that propose methodologies for the more rigorous generation and synthesis of evidence in assessing the impact of mHealth. In addition, we also welcome papers that investigate the challenges in implementing mHealth interventions in low- and middle-income countries or that propose novel types of applications/interventions for vulnerable populations, bridging the digital divide in resource-poor settings.
Prof. Dr. Sun-Young Kim
Dr. SuJin Kang
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- mHealth
- interventions
- health impact
- social and economic impact
- equity
- gender
- low- and middle-income countries
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