The mHealth Top Ten


Adapted from Patricia Mechael at the mHealth Summit 2010-11-22
This list was presented at the NIH Mobile Health Summit 2010 by Patricia Mechael, based at the Earth Institute at Columbia University. Over the course of the conference, academics, policy makers, health care professionals and representatives of the NGO community discussed and debated the current state of mobile health and offered various perspectives on how to move forward. The list below provides an excellent synthesis of the key messages of the conference.

1.Behaviour:
There is a need to unpack mobile media pathways that facilitate behaviour change. We need to evaluate the opportunities for mHealth to influence attitudes, understandings and approaches to health and wellness at an individual and community level and support these where they exist.

2.Context:
The development of health content must reflect localised understandings of health needs and behaviours. The creation and deployment of context specific solutions that are flexible and adaptive to specific environments is essential.

3.Evaluation:
There is an absence of concrete benchmarks and targets available to evaluate the impact of mHealth. These frameworks need to be created and consistently applied to determine outcomes, provide accountability and roll-out successes.

4.Realism:
The mHealth community needs to be realistic about what can be achieved, where and when. There is a need to look at what the demands are and integrate mobile to meet them in a realistic way.

5.Participation:
Invest in participatory research and design and invest in local capacity building to encourage ownership over mHealth implementations and foster sustainability.

6.Systems:
There is a need to shift towards a systems based approach in order to unlock the opportunities that mHealth provides across adjacent markets and industries. We need to leverage technology across systems.

7.Collaboration:
Collaboration is more fun than competition: there is an opportunity for improved communication, knowledge sharing and best practices across the mHealth eco-system. Transparency and cooperation will prevent the duplication of efforts and re-inventing the wheel.

8.Triple R's
Recycle, Reduce, Reuse- replicate what works, move on from the failures and work for scale. Communicate these outcomes to the wider community- as Bill Gates said, “success in one market, doesn’t equate to success overall.

9.Leadership:
In order to take mHealth to scale, strong leadership which links mHealth to existing (and future) health priorities is essential. Foresight and vision that can anticipate supply and demand opportunities for mHealth and harness the strength of public-private partnerships to meet these needs will be key to success.

10.Patients:
mHealth is not solely about the technology or one killer application-there is room for innovation across the space. We need to bring the focus back to the purpose of mHealth: improving the access to and quality of care for patients, leading to healthier lives.

Kyla Reid, GSMA Mobile Health Programme