నైరూప్య

The Novel Health Mobile Technology as an emerging strategy in diabetes management

Satish Kumar David and ohamed Rafiullah

Diabetes is a chronic disease that needs patient awareness, education, and self-management of the disease by patients. Mobile revolution and the availability of IT technologies can serve as a connecting bridge in healthcare system to facilitate the treatment of lifestyles diseases such as diabetes. However, the effectiveness of these techniques needs to be assessed rigorously.Therefore, the authors have systematically reviewed   the   recent   clinical   studies   using   Mobile   Health   applications   for   diabetes management. Original articles that were published in ISI indexed journals from PubMed database from 2007 to 2014 were collected using search specific key phrases. Selected papers were classified into ‘mobile applications for diabetes management’ which included applications related to diabetes management, ‘mobile applications for   patient  education’  which included all the articles where smart phone was used as a    tool for health education and ‘mobile applications for patient behavior modifications’ which included studies  that  looked  into  mobile  applications  which  would  affect  and  contribute  to  behavior changes. Mobile health interventions resulted in significant clinical improvement in most of the  studies.  Educational  SMS  produced  significant  results  but  was  inferior  to  the  apps  or  teleconsultations   which  are  more  engaging  with  patients.  It  seems  phone  calls  are  less  preferred,  as  there  were   only two studies where phone calls were used as intervention. Most  of  Smartphone  apps  were  evaluated  for  patient  management  and  education.  Implementing   reliable   mobile   health   platform   in  real-life  setups  may  be  a  challenging  task  and  would  require  adequate  infrastructure.  Cost benefit   and   cost-effectiveness    analysis   are    essential    before    implementation    of    such  systems.