The effectiveness of M-health technologies for improving health and health services: a systematic review protocol

Background: The application of mobile computing and communication technology is rapidly expanding in the
fields of health care and public health. This systematic review will summarise the evidence for the effectiveness of
mobile technology interventions for improving health and health service outcomes (M-health) around the world.
Findings: To be included in the review interventions must aim to improve or promote health or health service use
and quality, employing any mobile computing and communication technology. This includes: (1) interventions
designed to improve diagnosis, investigation, treatment, monitoring and management of disease; (2) interventions
to deliver treatment or disease management programmes to patients, health promotion interventions, and
interventions designed to improve treatment compliance; and (3) interventions to improve health care processes
e.g. appointment attendance, result notification, vaccination reminders.
A comprehensive, electronic search strategy will be used to identify controlled studies, published since 1990, and
indexed in MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycINFO, Global Health, Web of Science, the Cochrane Library, or the UK NHS
Health Technology Assessment database. The search strategy will include terms (and synonyms) for the following
mobile electronic devices (MEDs) and a range of compatible media: mobile phone; personal digital assistant (PDA);
handheld computer (e.g. tablet PC); PDA phone (e.g. BlackBerry, Palm Pilot); Smartphone; enterprise digital assistant;
portable media player (i.e. MP3 or MP4 player); handheld video game console. No terms for health or health service
outcomes will be included, to ensure that all applications of mobile technology in public health and health
services are identified. Bibliographies of primary studies and review articles meeting the inclusion criteria will be
searched manually to identify further eligible studies. Data on objective and self-reported outcomes and study
quality will be independently extracted by two review authors. Where there are sufficient numbers of similar interventions,
we will calculate and report pooled risk ratios or standardised mean differences using meta-analysis.
Discussion: This systematic review will provide recommendations on the use of mobile computing and
communication technology in health care and public health and will guide future work on intervention
development and primary research in this field.

Citation:
Free, C., Phillips, G., Felix, L., Galli, L., Patel, V. and Edwards, P. (2010), 'The effectiveness of M-health technologies for improving health and health services: a systematic review protocol', BMC Research Notes, 3, p. 250, doi:10.1186/1756-0500-3-250.