Managing Chronic Disease with #mHealth

An article from HIMSS

From the HIMSS article: 

Empowering individuals with chronic disease to better manage their health is shown to prevent complications, improve outcomes and reduce medical costs. However, traditional disease management approaches have largely failed because they are unable to target those who need focused outreach and take an ineffective and expensive “scattershot” approach to patient engagement. Once patients in need of engagement are identified, traditional, telephonic disease management lacks the tools needed to collect actionable data and drive meaningful health improvement. Because it does not adequately connect caregivers, treating physicians and patients, traditional disease management has largely been abandoned on grounds of high cost and low adherence.

Mobile health tools create a low-cost stream of highly actionable clinical data, using readily available cloud-connected sensors, ranging from glucose meters to heart monitors to asthma tools. The mobile platform offers new ways for patients to stay connected to clinicians and bridge barriers to compliance, such as language, transportation and financial considerations. For patients who may miss their diabetes education appointments or ignore educational materials handed out in the office, mobile health tools can bridge the gap by delivering educational support in the right format, at the right time to patients.