The spread of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus has pushed all affected countries to analyze all the opportunities offered by current technology, which generated a high number of solutions.
During each phase of the evolution of the pandemic, mobile technology (mTech) has played and is still playing an important triple role.
The first role is the traditional one played in the field of Digital Health by connecting citizens to the health system and providing them with highly innovative technological solutions.
The second role is to support teaching, work, and relational activities in an exceptional way, allowing social distancing between subjects, such as through messaging and/or video conferencing and/or social network tools.
The third role is specific to this pandemic and consists in providing mHealth solutions for controlling and monitoring the spread of the pandemic, such as through App-based solutions for the digital contact tracing.
The Covid-19 pandemic has hit every corner of the planet; however, the access to these technological solutions has not always been and still is not uniform due to the phenomenon called Digital Divide which depends on multifaceted aspects ranging from the lack of access to instrumental and network resources, to cultural and social barriers and to possible forms of communication disability.
During the pandemic, as URBAN TECH FOR HOPE Innovation hub, we’ve had our Technological Innovation Platforms for instance our mHealth app m-kliniki, which rests its foundations on mTech, continued to play its traditional role, in a more incisive and impressive way to increase the action of social distancing. In many realities we have gone from an mHealth used only in pilot experiences, and/or merely linked to research experiences, to an mHealth used in routine clinical applications regulated from every point of view. This last point has been reached in some cases also thanks to a rapid regulatory update, which often has provided for specific exceptions.
The advantages provided by our mHealth platform, m-kliniki app for patients/beneficiaries in the pandemic era are the following ones: –
- Promoting a healthy lifestyle and improving the awareness, active participation, and motivation of individuals for health care solutions and technologies.
- Facilitation and speeding up of doctor/patient communication and treatments tailored to the patients anywhere without the need for a stable/fixed workstation.
- Increase in the autonomy and safety of the patient who can be remotely monitored and located using the mTech (e.g., smartphone) we’re working to activate the USSD Model for non-smartphone owners and for reach in rural areas.
- All the advantages inherited from telemedicine for all actors involved in health care.
- Improving social distancing without sacrificing the continuity of care.
- Decreasing, because of the previous point, the risk of contagion from Sars-CoV-2, through, for example, the use of triages procedures using mHealth.