mHealth: A Passing Fad or Here to Stay?

The mHealth field focuses on the use of mobile technologies to support hospital care, healthy behavior, patient monitoring, and educational awareness. It is a new field that is developing rapidly, with thousands of mHealth applications developed within the last two years alone. In this chapter, the authors discuss the current state of, and the opportunities and challenges within, the mHealth field. They also introduce the term Mobile Social Networking Healthcare (MSN-Healthcare), which they define as follows: “The use of mobile health applications that incorporate social networking tools to promote healthy behaviors and awareness among patient groups and communities.” This concept has not been introduced in previous literature. This chapter is organized as follows: 1) introduction and background of mHealth; 2) opportunities for the implementation of mHealth in relation to chronic disease management, the education of health professionals, the needs of health professionals, and the decision-making process for patients and clinicians; 3) challenges concerning implementation and usability, information needs, and interactions with clinical work; 4) current application uses; and 5) future trends and conclusion.