| REVIEW ARTICLE |
|
| Year : 2015 | Volume
: 3
| Issue : 3 | Page : 129-135 |
|
|
Role of mhealth in effective response to disaster
Mohammad H Yarmohammadian1, Reza Safdari2, Nahid Tavakoli3
1 Health Management and Economics Research Center, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran
2 Department of Health Information Management, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
3 PhD Candidate of Health Management in Disaster, Health Management and Economics Research Center, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran
Correspondence Address:
Nahid Tavakoli
Health Management and Economics Research Center, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Hezar Jerib Street, Isfahan
Iran
 Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None  | Check |
DOI: 10.4103/2347-9019.157363
|
|
|
In recent years, many countries have suffered from various natural disasters. Disaster response has continued to face challenges in health care sector in all countries among which, information and communication management is a significant one. During the last decades, rapid advances in information technology have led to information management effectively and communication improvement in health care settings. Information technology is a vital solution for effective response to disasters and emergencies, so that if an efficient information and communication system is available it would be highly valuable. Of that, mobile technology represents a nearly computing technology infrastructure which is accessible, convenient, inexpensive, and easy to use. This article reviews the literature on the state of mobile health application in disaster management in some countries in 2014 by electronic search in databases such as: PubMed, Google scholar, Proquest, Science direct, etc. The findings showed that most projects have not yet reached the deployment stage, but evaluation exercises show that mHealth should allow faster processing and transport of patients, improved accuracy of triage, and better monitoring of unattended patients in a disaster scene. Since there is a high prevalence of cell phones among world population, it is expected health care providers and managers take measures for applying this technology to improve patients' safety and public health in disasters. There are challenges in the utilisation of mhealth in disasters, such as lack of structural and financial issues among countries. In the present paper, we have discussed on utilisation of mHealth technology in disaster response. |
|
|
|
| [FULL TEXT] [PDF]* |
|
 |
|
