The Ebola outbreak in West Africa and now the U.S. is surely among the most high-profile incidents wherein mobile health technologies could have proven their mettle. While some apps are already effective tools for public health workers, the sense in the industry is that apps are not being leveraged to the fullest extent and that more coordination is needed to use them as an asset.
The Ebola crisis, in fact, is showing a need for healthcare apps to respond to the disease quickly on the ground with point-of-care mobile diagnostics, four Sierra Leone-based doctors wrote recently in The Lancet.
Mobile technologies can offer early warning systems, response to outbreaks and communication among doctors and local officials on the scene and international health authorities, Rashid Ansumana, Jesse Bonwitt, David A. Stenger and Kathryn H. Jacobsen wrote in the article.
“Our laboratory and others in the region have shown that routine syndromic surveillance systems can be designed to rely on mobile phones which have become ubiquitous in West Africa,” the doctors wrote. “Open-source software programs that receive and send bulk SMS messages can be used for communication with populations and peripheral health centers.”
What’s more, digital maps replete with satellite images can be added to an open-source geographic information system (GIS) to improve case mapping, the authors explained.
Among the useful apps being deployed is a website and database created by Boston Children’s Hospital researchers, called healthmap.org, which has thus far been able to track the disease since soon after its outbreak in mid-March in Guinea.
The eight-year-old website site incorporates Twitter, social media feeds, online news aggregators, as well as public health reports to offer a global view of infectious diseases.
Healthmap is often used by local health departments, public health agencies, and travelers to countries dealing with deadly infectious diseases, according to the Boston Globe.
But as things stand today mobile apps could and should be playing a much bigger role in combating Ebola, Neil Polwart, managing director of Novarum DX, wrote recently in InformationWeek.
The company develops mHealth apps for medical diagnostics, and these tools can be used for tracing Ebola using smartphones to send data to public health experts.
Several initiatives have been launched to facilitate development of mobile apps for tracking and sharing healthcare information in resource-poor areas, Polwart wrote, but few have been put into widespread use.
“This begs the question: Why are these technologies not being fast-tracked to assist in the Ebola outbreak?” he asked. “With rapid point-of-care manufacturers pushing to develop tests that identify Ebola without the need to send patients and samples to off-site labs — a risk in itself — shouldn't mobile technology that reads, shares, and tracks results and offers medical advice also be implemented?”
It will take a coordinated effort to integrate and push the new technologies to the forefront, Polwart noted, adding that smartphone providers, mobile networks, application developers all working in conjuction with global health organizations could lead the citizenry in planning and preparing for events like a virus outbreak.
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