Challenges of Mobile Health Applications in Developing Countries

Global health care has become an enormous industry worldwide, where trends such as aging populations, environmental and climate changes, catastrophic events, and the spread and evolution of diseases pose significant challenges. With the rapid growth of information technology (IT), wireless technologies, and mobile services, health care processes are able to increasingly benefit from new technological advances and applications built on top of them. Specifically, the area of “Mobile Health” or mHealth, which leverages mobile phone functionality to provide medical and public health services, has become a very promising trend. Wireless and mobile technologies have great potential in improving patient care, reducing costs, streamlining processes, allowing adherence to regulations, and many other health-related activities. However, the developing world faces numerous challenges in realizing the infrastructure and technical expertise required to adopt mHealth solutions and applications. In this chapter, we focus on these challenges in the developing world and highlight existing problems and risks in realizing mHealth applications and services. This chapter also proposes various solutions to overcome these problems.