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Correspondence to Dr Kevin Yi-Lwern Yap, Department of Pharmacy, Faculty of Science, National University of Singapore, Block S4A, 18 Science Drive 4, Singapore 117543, Singapore; [email protected]
Introduction
A little more than a decade ago, the term ‘mobile health’ (mhealth) was coined to describe the application of mobile devices (MDs) and related technologies in healthcare provision.1 Although this term has been in use since 2003, few experts in the field agree on its scope and definition.1 2 According to the WHO Global Observatory for eHealth, mhealth is “medical and public health practice supported by MDs, such as mobile phones, patient monitoring devices, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and other wireless devices.”2 In addition to the MDs mentioned in this definition, smartphones, portable media players and tablet personal computers (tablet PCs) have important applications in mhealth.3 Examples of the functionalities of these devices that are used in healthcare include, but are not limited to: short message services (SMS), paging, automated sensing, mobile applications (apps), media capabilities and videoconferencing.3 4 For purposes of this review, the term ‘mhealth’ is used to mean clinical and public health activities involving MDs.
As the major component of mhealth, MDs have evolved a lot since the 1973 introduction of the first mobile phone, the DynaTac.5 The first time introductions of the PDA and smartphone (the IBM Simon Personal Communicator) in 1992, iPhone in 2007 and iPad in 2010 are some of the important milestones in this regard.6–8 In recent years, MDs are progressively becoming ubiquitous and have significant contributions in day-to-day life.9 As far as the use of MDs in healthcare is concerned, the ubiquity of mobile phones and the recent advancements in wireless and smartphone technologies are making mhealth even more appealing.10 Reports from the first quarter of 2014 show that there were about 100 000 mhealth apps listed in the two major app stores (Apple and Android).11 Moreover, the annual revenue of the health-related mobile apps market is projected to reach more than US$26 billion by 2017 from its value of 2.4 billion in 2013.11
In an effort to tap into the potential of mhealth, there has been an increase in the amount of research in recent years.12 As...