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Mobile Health in Emergency Care

This chapter describes the role of mobile health (mHealth) in healthcare, specifically in the field of emergency care. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines mHealth as, “An area of electronic health (eHealth) that provides health services and information via mobile technologies such as mobile phones and PDAs” (Källander et al., 2014). We consider mHealth to be generally defined as the technology and tools that provide mobility to patients and providers. We also consider mHealth as a critical component of telehealth and its subset telemedicine. The American Telemedicine Association (ATA) defines telemedicine as, “the use of medical information exchanged from one site to another via electronic communications to improve a patient’s clinical health status. Telemedicine includes a growing variety of applications and services using two-way video, email, smart phones, wireless tools, and other forms of telecommunications technology.” There are references to telemedicine since the 1920s, but mHealth became more broadly recognized in the early 1960s with space exploration and the need to monitor vital signs and other physiological measurements while in space. Since then, many telemedicine research projects explored providing healthcare to remote or rural areas (Bashshur et al., 1975). In the United States, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (2010), was designed to curb healthcare costs and improve access to care. The ACA is changing the healthcare landscape as payment models move away from traditional fee-forservice arrangements to placing risk on providers for population health (Kaiser Family Foundation KFF, 2014). For example, Accountable Care Organizations (ACO) made up of physicians, hospitals, and insurers are incentivized to provide high quality care at a lower cost. The financial risk placed on providers for their population’s healthcare costs should serve as the impetus for implementing technology interventions to improve the management of chronic disease and enhance preventive care and wellness (KFF, 2013).