Mobile health (mHealth) tools have the potential to play a pivotal role in fostering a sense of greater patient engagement within underserved populations. By facilitating patient use of mHealth applications in collaboration with electronic health record (EHR) and personal health record (PHR) systems there is an opportunity to empower individuals to take a more active role toward managing their health conditions.

The proliferation of consumer mobile health applications and devices is creating new opprotunities for engaging patients in their care and leaves little doubt as to the impact that these tools will have on the way that people manage their health, health information, and health communications with their care providers, family and friends. This shift to increased self-management of health by consumers will change a patient’s relationship with their doctor and the way healthcare is practiced.

The current laws and standards in place to ensure patient’s privacy and health information security will need further review to determine whether mobile health technologies create unique situations that are not yet addressed. This poses many challenges for health centers as to how best to support patient use of these tools and ways in which to incorporate them into their own clincial support systems.

Mobile health characterizes a shift in the point of care for the patient. The point of care has classically been located at the hospital or clinic. Mobile health is beginning to shift this model so that the point of care is more frequently a matter of where the person happens to be located at that time, consequently providing opportunities for more timely care. It is also important to note that these tools help to increase the accessibility of Healthcare to populations where direct access to Healthcare professionals is limited and so health management is more frequently left in the hands of the consumer.

The tools provide in this resource cover a range of different mobile health tools, strategies, and guidelines for consideration as Health Centers seek to leverage these technologies to better engage and activate their patients.