Here is a guide that describes the six steps for implementing mobile health tools in clinical practice. Mobile health tools (mHealth tools) may be used to empower and educate patients, detect symptoms, promote behaviour change, manage illness, medication or appointment reminders, counselling, and education.
To understand how to influence mHealth tool use among patients, caregivers, and clinicians, we synthesized 30 literature reviews about mHealth tool implementation strategies, recommendations, facilitators, and barriers. We distilled our results into six mHealth tool implementation steps, detailing their importance and actionable strategies. It is our hope that implementers can follow these steps to optimize mHealth tools effectiveness, address usage barriers, and meet user needs.
Many mHealth tools fail to improve health outcomes or achieve long-term user engagement due to:
- inconsistent or short-term attention to user needs and concerns,
- user culture, age, gender, literacy, numeracy, education, and technological competence consideration, and
- insufficient consideration of the needs of the clinical context of the mHealth tool.
What is mHealth?
Mobile health (mHealth) describes the use of mobile and wireless technologies (i.e., applications, smartphones, tablets, self-monitoring devices, mobile services, etc.) to support the achievement of health objectives.
Bush, P. L., Chu, D., Engler, K. C., Lussier, S., Barnett, T. A., & Lebouché, B. (2024). A 6-Step Guide to mHealth Implementation. Unité de soutien SSA Québec
Bush, P. L., Chu, D., Engler, K. C., Lussier, S., Barnett, T. A., & Lebouché, B. (2024). A 6-Step Guide to mHealth Implementation. Unité de soutien SSA Québec.
Who should read this guide?
This beginner’s guide to mHealth implementation is designed for people who:
- are interested, but unfamiliar with implementing an mHealth tool into clinical practice of any specialty, including patients, caregivers, and clinicians
- have an mHealth tool to implement, but are unfamiliar with implementing a mHealth tool into clinical practice