Mobile health for chronic disease management: what have we learnt in the last decade?

Chronic disease management accounts for 80% of the growth in healthcare spending in the developed world in the last 50 years. The switching on of GPRS (and later 3G) services in the UK ten years ago enabled the start of mobile health as a possible technology to improve the management of chronic disease and make it more efficient. This lecture reviews what has been achieved in the first decade. Evidence from our clinical trials shows that targeted interventions using mobile health for short periods of time (up to six months) deliver clear benefit in terms of improved patient outcomes (e.g. improved control in diabetes and decreased blood pressure after a stroke). However, the evidence for the use of mobile health in long-term monitoring, where the aim is to reduce costly hospital admissions, is much less clear. The speaker discusses the requirements for successful long-term monitoring, which include smart data collection (maximum information at minimal cost to the patient) and the use of patient-specific models.