Hi Sally - I am a 1993 BHScN graduate from AIT! Nice to see your question and drift down memory lane!
Your question reminds me of nurse-led (Dr. Cheryl Forchuk) research I am keenly following out of the Mental Health Engagement Network out of London Ontario, Canada. The focus of this work was not so much "education" per se, but health promotion, empowerment and patient-services engagement using hand-held devices/phones with various applications that are uniquely adopted and incorporated into outreach, follow-up and networking between patients and service providers. A bit more information is here:
http://publish.uwo.ca/~cforchuk/MHEN/project.html
and a recent publication here:
http://esciencecentral.org/journals/mental-health-engagement-network-innovating-communitybased-mental-healthcare-2329-9126.1000143.pdf
I look forward to hearing and learning more in this discussion topic. Thanks!
Sonya
Thanks Sonya,
i started at AIT 1994 so just missed you. It is strange to be back there!
Thanks for the links, I had not thought to search mental health. Although I have had exposure to online CBT which was interesting but at that stage it did not work on mobile devices. Taking it mobile is an interesting thought!
Hi Sally
I am working developing a mobile application to facilitate access to the health system after assessing the needs of the population.
Has been taken into account the dimensions of health literacy that will be valued to check its effectiveness.
Pilar - I would be very interested to learn what other dimensions you feel are applicable on a mobile device.
Research about the relationship between healthcare literacy and patient outcomes is a rapidly growing field here in the US. In the US, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) published a seminal report in 2004, Health literacy; A prescription to end confusion. Among other needs identified, the authors stress the need for measures of healthcare literacy that do not depend entirely on written evaluation.
Here in South Florida, our enormous and varied immigrant population is often unreachable via written materials. They learn about healthcare on TV, etc which is hugely inaccurate. Another aspect of healthcare literacy that we fail to address is numeracy. As an oncology nurse, I witnessed often when a patient's eyes rolled at an oncologist's statistical answer to a question about what to expect from a proposed chemo treatment.
Hi Charlotte,
thanks for your comments. As you know, three dimensions or levels of health literacy were identified: functional (where is icluded the numeracy capability you pointed about), interactive and critical.
In my opinion, it is necessary to take into account these dimensios in the design of assesment tools and interventions. In our mobile application, we ask the user, after use, to perform what they learned. For example, accesing and request a medical appointment. At the same time, the app returns information, thus having objective data of user empowerment.
Written information, especially if autoinformed, has its drawbacks and limations.
Greetings.
When you mention mobile technology, this is now part of the EHR, where there is much research on improved outcomes. The variables to examine include patient engagement, self management, mobile apps (many are in development). The future of mobile technology is moving so fast, that research is needed. See the attached films.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xnPZWCkLSA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6R8EKkajsTw
Hello
In recent times use of technology in patient care is fastly booming up. Use of mobile phone applications in patient care has become very useful for patients and care givers. We find many studies on evaluating the effectiveness of using mobile phones of patient in giving reminders for medication compliance and follow up of diabetic patients etc. interventions for improving mental health among youth/ adolescents through mobile apps is the rising trend in research. Here are some references which I found relevant. Hope it helps.
I am very interested in hearing more about the mobile app incorperating health literacy.
We have runned an study testing how nurses learn with mobile tech at bed-side. There was an Union European project called SMILE-On and it was done in oncology context. SMILEON: Supporting innovative learning approaches through Mobile Integration in the workpLacE - Oncology Nursing.
these are references which discussed about mobile apps for eHealth:
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Geoscience
- Atmospheric Sciences
- Climate Science
- Climate Change