mHealth is widely regarded as the application of mobile technology to health. This is a useful simplification especially to the uninitiated and the unsuspecting…
It doesn’t do justice to what is ‘mobile’ and socially ‘mobilized’ in mhealth, thereby presupposing a simplistic technologically deterministic result.
I was just thinking that the key feature in the practice of mobile communication in health is connectivity rather than mobility, especially in the context of developing settings. Of course, connectivity becomes an issue when mobility arises.
But look back and think: haven’t individuals and communities been mobile from time immemorial? Haven’t technologies been mobile in themselves? walking around the surface of this crust we call the earth?
What mobiles and telecommunications introduce to use now is mainly connectivity, accessibility on the go. It is the increased individualized capacity to access global and local networks from any place and any time that is making much difference.
We need to begin to foster this phenomenon for health, allowing access to health-related information to everyone. That should move us closer to meeting the MDGs (if you don’t know what that means, chances are that you don’t need it…lol).
This is one of the major ways we should develop the mHealth space.
Ime Asangansi is an mHealth researcher based in Nigeria. He is a research fellow at the University of Oslo, Norway.
