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H_pe for mHealth: more "y" or "o" on the horizon?

Publication ,  Journal Article
Labrique, A; Vasudevan, L; Chang, LW; Mehl, G
Published in: International journal of medical informatics
May 2013

Efforts in the domain of mobile health, or mHealth, have been criticized for the unfettered proliferation of pilots and a lack of a rigorous evidence base to support these strategies. In this letter, we present the response of a group of researchers in the mHealth community to the recent calls for evidence issued by global health and funding agencies. We support our conclusions through a summary of the numerous ongoing mHealth studies listed in the US federal clinical trial registry.We conducted a search on the US federal clinicaltrials.gov database using the keywords "mHealth", "mobile" or "cell AND phone" to obtain 1678 results of studies. We manually inspected each result to check if it fit the purview of an mHealth study. Studies that were terminated or withdrawn prior to submission were excluded.We identified 215 unique mHealth studies that were registered in the clinicaltrials.gov database, of which 8.4% (n=18) were observational in nature while the remaining 91.6% (n=197) were interventional. Of the 215 studies, 81.8% (n=176) studies used a classical randomized trial design and 40 new studies were added to the database between May and November 2012 alone. Based on these results, we posit that the field is entering a new 'era' where a body of rigorous evaluation of mHealth strategies is rapidly accumulating.The transition into an era of evidence-based mHealth supports our position that innovation in this domain can be evaluated with the same rigor as other public health strategies, attenuating some of the hype previously associated with mHealth.

Duke Scholars

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Published In

International journal of medical informatics

DOI

EISSN

1872-8243

ISSN

1386-5056

Publication Date

May 2013

Volume

82

Issue

5

Start / End Page

467 / 469

Related Subject Headings

  • Telemedicine
  • Quality of Health Care
  • Quality Improvement
  • Outcome Assessment, Health Care
  • Medical Informatics
  • Humans
  • Biomedical Technology
  • 46 Information and computing sciences
  • 42 Health sciences
  • 32 Biomedical and clinical sciences
 

Citation

APA
Chicago
ICMJE
MLA
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Labrique, A., Vasudevan, L., Chang, L. W., & Mehl, G. (2013). H_pe for mHealth: more "y" or "o" on the horizon? International Journal of Medical Informatics, 82(5), 467–469. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2012.11.016
Labrique, Alain, Lavanya Vasudevan, Larry William Chang, and Garrett Mehl. “H_pe for mHealth: more "y" or "o" on the horizon?International Journal of Medical Informatics 82, no. 5 (May 2013): 467–69. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2012.11.016.
Labrique A, Vasudevan L, Chang LW, Mehl G. H_pe for mHealth: more "y" or "o" on the horizon? International journal of medical informatics. 2013 May;82(5):467–9.
Labrique, Alain, et al. “H_pe for mHealth: more "y" or "o" on the horizon?International Journal of Medical Informatics, vol. 82, no. 5, May 2013, pp. 467–69. Epmc, doi:10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2012.11.016.
Labrique A, Vasudevan L, Chang LW, Mehl G. H_pe for mHealth: more "y" or "o" on the horizon? International journal of medical informatics. 2013 May;82(5):467–469.
Journal cover image

Published In

International journal of medical informatics

DOI

EISSN

1872-8243

ISSN

1386-5056

Publication Date

May 2013

Volume

82

Issue

5

Start / End Page

467 / 469

Related Subject Headings

  • Telemedicine
  • Quality of Health Care
  • Quality Improvement
  • Outcome Assessment, Health Care
  • Medical Informatics
  • Humans
  • Biomedical Technology
  • 46 Information and computing sciences
  • 42 Health sciences
  • 32 Biomedical and clinical sciences