Engineering sustainable mHealth: the role of Action Research

Abstract

The present paper aims to review the value of Action Research (AR) in the evolution of sustainable mHealth. On the one hand, mHealth is a medically and economically massively expanding domain. On the other hand, the mHealth development suffers from a serious lack of sustainability, which has become particularly evident through the concept of ''pilotitis.'' The proposed methodological remedy shows a high congruence to the principle of AR. A quantitative and qualitative literature research is performed. Each result from the qualitative literature research is analyzed with regard to aim, main focuses of AR methodology, study results and AR contribution to mHealth development. The principles of AR with regard to mHealth development are described, showing a strong connection between corresponding methodology and effects in health care. We analyze the quantitative contribution of AR to health care in general and show the typical phases of AR healthcare implementation. Furthermore, a quantitative literature research reveals that AR contributes to 6 % of mHealth publications. Our qualitative literature research discovers 27 studies dealing with AR contributions (54 % direct, 46 % methodological) to mHealth. Main subjects of the direct contributions are Health Information Systems (38 %), Surgery (23 %), Conservative/internal medicine (15 %), Self-help (15 %) and Medical Education (8 %). In summary, our review shows that AR contributes qualitatively and quantitatively to the mHealth development and that AR has a special potential to generate sustainable mHealth solutions. Graphical Abstract

Seeking Inspiration: Examining the Validity and Reliability of a New Smartphone Respiratory Therapy Exergame App

“…It would be both unfeasible and unethical to expect human subjects to produce the considerably large number of reproducible breaths necessary to assert that new and emergent respiratory apps are both reliable (i.e., reproducible) and clinically valid when compared with reference devices [42]. Non-human generation of airflows for respiratory application testing has previously drawn on techniques used in the calibration of equipment in clinical respiratory laboratories settings [4,43]. Decompression calibrator devices and flow delivery pumps (for ventilator calibration) are specialist devices used in clinical respiratory laboratory settings to discharge air at pre-determined flow rates [44].…”

“…Diagnostic and therapeutic mHealth (i.e., mobile health) applications detect breath sounds and sound components for a variety of innovative health improvement purposes including respiratory rate monitoring in children, cough diagnostics, sleep apnoea detection, asthma inhaler technique training and respiratory function testing. [3][4][5][6][7][8][9]. Some mHealth apps infer respiratory flow rates by means of calibrated vortex whistles to produce sound of a known pitch for microphone detection, or by constraining and controlling mouth shape as a potential variable influencing the respiratory sounds generated; others may employ external microphones to improve sound detection [10,11].…”