Dr Ali Haider Rashidee

Emerging mobile health in Bangladesh

Mobile health, better known as mHealth is an emerging discipline for medical and public health practice. The Global Observatory for eHealth (GOe) of the World Health Organisation (WHO) defined mHealth or mobile health as medical and public health practice supported by mobile devices, such as mobile phones, patient monitoring devices, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and other wireless devices.
mHealth applications include the use of mobile devices in
* Medical teleconsultations even from the most remote areas within the telecom network
* collection of clinical data for monitoring of patients’ vital signs/test results real-time
* supporting treatment and medication compliance
* collecting community health data
* advising on health issues
* sending health alerts and reminders, and
* communicating between health-care workers.
On October 17, 2012, The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and WHO launched a new partnership called the ‘mHealth’ Initiative to use mobile technology, in particular text messaging and applications, to help combat non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular diseases and chronic respiratory diseases.
There are few mHealth programmes going on in Bangladesh. The government health services has established free teleconsultation with government doctors, SMS services for patient management and communication with staff, etc.
The Mobile Alliance for Maternal Action (MAMA) Bangladesh program from D.Net with assistance from USAID and Johnson and Johnson, provides Bangla voice messages to pregnant women to support the antennal, natal and post natal informational needs for the mother and the newborn.
Many mobile phone companies are providing medical advice and prescriptions to millions of callers in their networks at nominal fees, alleviating some of the access and timeliness related challenges in health.

The writer is the President & CEO of InformaticaHealth, USA & eHEALTH