MHealth (ie, mobile health) is all the rage in some public health circles; using mobile technology like phones to collect data, to send reminders for antenatal appointments, etc. I'll be honest that I didn't invest a ton of energy in reading about various mhealth initiatives the last two years while taking classes because a) some of it seems overhyped and b) being a young, tech-savvy health professional I was mildly worried about getting pigeonholed into that work and chose to concentrate more on general methodology and tools. But now that my work involves mhealth (somewhat peripherally for now) I'm paying more attention. Here are two good resources that came across my radar recently:
- William Philbrick of mHealth Alliance has put together a useful report called "mHealth and MNCH: State of the Evidence" (PDF). It summarizes what the research to date on mobile health technology says about maternal, newborn, and child health. Most helpfully, I think, it outlines a few areas where there's not much need for further duplicative research, and other areas where there has been little or no research at all. This is good reading even if you're not particularly interested in mHealth, as the study notes that the mHealth community is fairly close and doesn't always do the best job of disseminating results to the broader global health industry.
- I first saw the link above via my friend and Hopkins classmate Nadi, who sent it out to the mHealth Student Group on Google Groups. Lots of other good links and discussion on that group, so join up!