It is the season of books, with fall and slowly winter approaching, hence another book review. The topic of this is very relevant to the journal. We are now seeing technology become more relevant for collaboration and interprofessional education in the health sector. This book review helps add to the growing discussion.
Kunal
Image courtesy of Artur Łuczka
Current and Emerging mHealth Technologies: Adoption, Implementation and Use
Author(s) or Editor(s) name: Emre Sezgin, Soner Yildirim, Sevgi Özkan Yildirim & Evren Sumuer
Place of publication and publisher: Cham, Switzerland, Springer International Publishing
Date: 2018
Number of Pages: 299
Price, in either UK Sterling or US Dollars, or other currency if applicable: $126.84
ISBN number: 978-3-319-73135-3
Review by April Langille, Concordia University of Edmonton
Current and Emerging mHealth Technologies: Adoption, Implementation and Use is a book intended for health care professionals and developers to understand the implications of using health technologies as a resource in health care services. This book provides the strengths of current health care technologies such as mobility access, patient assistance and condition management. It also provides detailed solutions to the challenges involved in the development of mhealth applications such as higher security, privacy and lower service costs. The editors of this book present a socio-technical perspective on health care technology and provide different theories as to how these technologies can improve a patient’s wellbeing. The main objective of this book is to not only to emphasise how these technologies can advance patient care and public health but also to examine how future research can be beneficial in improving health care’s efficiency and usability.
The goal of this book is to implement the ways that healthcare applications can provide physicians, patients and the population opportunities for better health care treatment. This book is divided into four sections based on mHealth’s behavioural changes, monitoring of behaviour, use in health care delivery and global perspectives. It contains a total of 17 chapters with both theoretical and practical perspectives emphasized. Each chapter has its own topic, author(s), subsections and reference list. The chapters in this book allow the reader to clearly understand the different challenges and solutions involved in mHealth from a sociological and psychological context. One important concept in this book is the persuasiveness of consumers using mHealth applications. This concept emphasizes the value of having strong evidence as to how an application can benefit consumers and how developers can improve an application based on the consumer’s needs. The focus of the research on persuasiveness and usability is to offer solutions in improving a consumer’s trust and intention of using an application as a resource.
One main strength identified in this book is the integration of different global perspectives on mHealth. This book considers the different cultural and language barriers that influence the success of applications. It also considers the cross-cultural problems with mobile health accessibility in low developed countries. The different perspectives in this book provide the reader with clear factors such as cost and surveillance that could impact the use of health care technologies in different communities or groups. This book efficiently considers the different factors and provides solutions that can contribute to mHealth in becoming more useful for users in different professions and societies.
In general, this book provides an organized and informational view of the challenges and advancements of using technology and mobile devices into health care treatments. It can offer a great contribution in understanding how health care technologies can support people who want to manage their health. This book can provide doctors, nurses and therapists with the resources to understand and utilize technology more in their professions. I would highly recommend this book to caregivers and providers who work in health care services.