M-Health: Health Service Delivery Opportunities and Implementation Challenges

Call for Papers

Mobile Health (m-Health) is an evolving paradigm that brings together the evolution of emerging mobile communications and networks technologies with the concept of “connected healthcare” anytime and anywhere. Throughout the world, there has been a mounting interest within the health sector to take advantage of the rapid uptake of mobile communication technologies. Despite the interest in this emerging field, in–depth examination and analysis of what works and does not work or the evidence base for m-Health has yet to be thoroughly assessed and established. Absence of such information hampers efforts to capitalize on expanding telecommunications networks and implement successful m-Health projects beyond the pilot levels. The momentum surrounding m-Health is rapidly increasing; however, organizations, development agencies, telecommunications companies, and governments require more intensive evaluation and research for better informed investments. Evidence from early m-Health deployments should be informing and guiding subsequent projects to ensure that ineffective approaches are not duplicated and early successes can be replicated and scaled.

The main focus of this special issue will be to produce evidence-based best practice guidelines for m-Health, identify opportunities to improve health outcomes and strengthen health systems, and highlight the challenges and barriers that are hampering m-Health wide-scale implementation and sustainability. Papers are invited on any m-health application area in both developing and developed countries. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Qualitative and quantitative evaluations of m-Health programs
• Cost-benefit studies of m-Health programs
• Emerging opportunities to leverage m-Health
• Policy analysis of m-Health
• M-Health strategic planning
• Technical and communication opportunities and challenges
• Organizational change and change management of m-health systems
• Ethical considerations related to m-Health
• Security and privacy issues in m-Health systems
• M-Health interoperability and standards
• Business models and financing
• Risk management
• User-centric Design
• Building capacity
• M-Health collaborations; public-private partnerships

Before submission authors should carefully read over the journal's Author Guidelines, which are located at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijta/guidelines/. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the journal Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com/ according to the following timetable:

Lead Guest Editor

• Robert S. H. Istepanian, MINT Research Centre, Kingston University, Kingston Upon Thames, Surrey KT1 2EE, UK

Guest Editors

• Patricia Mechael, Center for Global Health and Economic Development, Earth Institute, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA
• Nada Philip, Faculty of Science, Engineering and Computing, Kingston University, Kingston Upon Thames, Surrey KT1 2EE, UK