• Posyandu
• WhatsApp
• anthropometric
• app
• baby
• chatbots
• child
• data collection
• digital
• digital health
• digital intervention
• digital technology
• infant
• mHealth
• mobile health
• neonatal
• nutrition
• nutrition surveillance
• nutritional
• pediatric
• surveillance
• toddler

• Alzheimer’s disease
• Dementia
• Geriatric nursing
• Natural language processing
• Pain

• South Africa
• WhatsApp
• instant messaging
• key informant interviews
• smartphones
• teledermatology

• Dermatology
• South Africa
• Humans
• Telemedicine
• Hospitals, District
• Mobile Applications
• Skin Diseases/diagnosis
• Skin Diseases/therapy

• D43TW007004-13. FIC NIH HHS

• Orthopaedics
• Research
• Social media
• Trauma
• WhatsApp

• EMS
• Kenya
• WhatsApp
• mHealth

• cross-sectional survey
• social media
• spondyloarthritis

• Clinical decision-making
• accident prevention
• computer-assisted diagnosis
• emergency service
• injuries

• Adverse event
• After-hours
• Outcome
• Quality care
• Spine surgery
• WhatsApp

• Humans
• Retrospective Studies
• Prospective Studies
• Spine/surgery
• Surgeons
• Operating Rooms

• Physician
• collaboration
• hospital
• interphysician
• medical specialist
• systematic review

• Communication
• Developing Countries
• Humans
• Income
• Poverty
• Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic
• Telemedicine

• Apps
• Clinical communication
• Instant messaging
• Smartphone
• Whatsapp

• Communication
• Computer Security
• Humans
• Privacy
• Smartphone
• Technology

Healthcare contexts are witnessing a growing use of applications to support clinical processes and to communicate between peers and with patients. An increasing number of hospital professionals use instant-messaging applications such as WhatsApp in their daily work. Previous research has mainly focused on the advantages and risks of WhatsApp usage in different clinical settings, but limited evidence is available about whether and how individual and organizational determinants can influence the use of WhatsApp in hospitals. Moreover, instruments to explore this phenomenon are lacking. A theoretical four-factor model based on the ‘Technology Acceptance Model’ and the Institutional Theory, guided the development of a new measure of the individual and institutional determinants of WhatsApp usage in hospitals.

To develop and psychometrically test the questionnaire ‘Digital Innovation Adoption in Hospitals’.

A panel of researchers and clinical experts generated an initial pool of 35 items by identifying and adapting items from existing measures. These items were assessed for content and face validity by fourteen experts. The final 28-item ‘Digital Innovation Adoption in Hospitals’ questionnaire comprising four sections (Perceived risks, Perceived usefulness, Regulative factors and Normative factors) was administered online to nurses and physicians. Construct validity was tested through confirmatory factor analysis.

The sample included 326 hospital nurses and physicians. The theoretical four-factors model was confirmed and the confirmatory factor analysis yielded acceptable fit indexes. The correlations between the factors were significant and ranged from -0.284 to 0.543 (p < .01). Reliability in terms of internal consistency was satisfactory with Cronbach’s alpha coefficient ranging from 0.918–0.973.

This study is the first to provide a validated tool to evaluate the use of WhatsApp in hospitals. The new instrument shows reasonable psychometric properties and is a promising and widely applicable measure of factors that influence the use of WhatsApp in hospitals.

• WhatsApp
• data storage
• medical records
• record keeping

• COVID-19
• Humans
• Information Storage and Retrieval
• Pandemics
• Privacy
• SARS-CoV-2

• D43TW007004-13 Fogarty International Centre for the National Institutes of Health

Physician-to-physician teleconsultation has increasingly played an essential role in delivering optimum health care services, particularly in orthopedic practice. In this study, the usability of a smartphone app for teleconsultation among orthopedic specialists was investigated to explore issues informing further recommendations for improvement in the following iterations.

This study aimed to explore usability issues emerging from users’ interactions with MEDIC app, a smartphone-based patient-centered physician-to-physician teleconsultation system.

Five attending physicians in the Department of Orthopedics in a large medical school in Bangkok, Thailand, were recruited and asked to perform 5 evaluation tasks, namely, group formation, patient registration, clinical data capturing, case record form creation, and teleconsultation. In addition, one expert user was recruited as the control participant. Think aloud was adopted while performing the tasks. Semistructured interviews were conducted after each task and prior to the exit. Quantitative and qualitative measures were used to identify usability issues in 7 domains based on the People At the Centre of Mobile Application Development model: effectiveness, efficiency, satisfaction, learnability, memorability, error, and cognitive load.

Several measures indicate various aspects of usability of the app, including completion rates, time to completion, number of clicks, number of screens, errors, incidents where participants were unable to perform tasks, which had previously been completed, and perceived task difficulty. Major and critical usability issues based on participant feedback were rooted from the limitation of screen size and resolution. Errors in data input (eg, typing errors, miscalculation), action failures, and misinterpretation of data (ie, radiography) were the most critical and common issues found in this study. A few participants did not complete the assigned tasks mostly owing to the navigation design and misreading/misunderstanding icons. However, the novice users were quite positive that they would be able to become familiar with the app in a short period of time.

The usability issues in physician-to-physician teleconsultation systems in smartphones, in general, are derived from the limitations of smartphones and their operating systems. Although some recommendations were devised to handle these usability issues, usability evaluation for additional development should still be further investigated.

• electronic medical records
• mobile applications
• mobile phone
• orthopedics
• physician-to-physician consultation
• remote consultation
• teleconsultation
• usability

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccines undergo rigorous testing in clinical trials to meet high safety standards before rollout to the general population. While over 200 million vaccines are administered in more than 50 countries, coincidental adverse events including deaths and related fatalities are temporally associated with the vaccination campaign. Scientific evidence supports the safety of the vaccines and there are studies proving vaccination outweighs any risk or concerns except in rare cases. Reports of these post-vaccination deaths and misleading claims have fueled hesitancy among individuals that need to be addressed. In this review, we summarize epidemiological data related to COVID-19 vaccine deaths, including instances where scientific evidence exists to justify misinterpretation of surveillance data. Rare cases where vaccination-related deaths or serious side effects exist were described. Available evidence does not support making assumptions and conclusions that the vaccines are necessarily responsible for these deaths or adverse events. In addition, we share lessons from these experiences and recommendations to guide the mass population.

• Adverse events
• COVID-19 vaccines
• Death
• Vaccination
• Vaccine safety

• COVID-19
• health care
• internet
• medical education
• mobile phone
• research activity
• social media
• social networking
• telemedicine

• COVID
• COVID-19
• clinical informatics
• clinical operations
• emergency medicine

• Academic Medical Centers/organization & administration
• COVID-19/diagnosis
• COVID-19/therapy
• Clinical Decision-Making
• Electronic Health Records
• Emergency Service, Hospital/organization & administration
• Hospital Administration
• Hospital Information Systems
• Humans
• Medical Informatics
• Medical Order Entry Systems
• New York City
• Organizational Case Studies
• Telemedicine/organization & administration

• Adult
• Diagnostic Errors/prevention & control
• Female
• Health Care Surveys
• Health Information Exchange/standards
• Humans
• Internship and Residency/methods
• Internship and Residency/standards
• Male
• Mobile Applications/standards
• Needs Assessment
• Orthopedics/education
• Orthopedics/legislation & jurisprudence
• Orthopedics/trends
• Referral and Consultation/ethics
• Referral and Consultation/standards
• Smartphone
• Turkey

In South Korea, most graduated medical students undertake a 1-year internship before beginning residency and specialization. Interns usually work in a tertiary hospital and rotate between different, randomly assigned departments to be exposed to different medical specialties. Their jobs are mostly simple and repetitive but are still essential for the patient care process. However, owing to the lack of experience and overwhelming workload, interns at tertiary hospitals in South Korea are usually inefficient, often delaying the entire clinical process. Health care providers have widely adopted mobile electronic medical records (mEMRs) as they have been shown to improve workflow efficiency.

This study investigates the association between the frequency of mEMR usage and the clinical task completion interval time among interns in a tertiary hospital.

This mixed methods study was conducted at the Samsung Medical Center, Seoul, South Korea. Interns who worked at the Samsung Medical Center from March 2018 to February 2019 were included. The hospital electronic medical record (EMR) system known as DARWIN (Data Analysis and Research Window for Integrated kNowledge) was launched with PC and mobile. Both versions are actively used in hospitals by personnel in various positions. We collected the log data from the mEMR server and the intern clinical task time-series data from the EMR server. Interns can manage the process of identifying patients, assigning the clinical task, finishing the requested clinical intern tasks, etc, through the use of the mEMR system. We compared the clinical task completion interval among 4 groups of interns divided by the mEMR frequency quantile. Then, System Usability Score (SUS) questionnaires and semistructured interviews were conducted.

The regular mEMR users were defined as those who logged in more than once a day on average and used the mEMR until the level after login. Among a total of 87 interns, 84 used the mEMR to verify the requested clinical tasks. The most frequently used item was “Intern task list.” Analysis of the 4 intern groups revealed an inverse relationship between the median time of the task completion interval and the frequency of mEMR use. Correlation analysis showed that the intern task completion time interval had a significant inverse relationship with the individual frequency of mEMR usage (coefficient=-0.27; 95% CI -0.46 to -0.04; P=.02). In the additional survey, the mean SUS value was 81.67, which supported the results of the data analysis.

Our findings suggest that frequent mEMR use is associated with improved work efficiency in hospital interns with good usability of the mEMR. Such finding supports the idea that the use of mEMR improves the effectiveness and workflow efficiency of interns working in hospitals and, more generally, in the context of health care.

• EHR
• EMR
• efficiency
• electronic health record
• electronic medical record
• intern
• mHealth
• mobile EMR
• mobile health
• workflow

Mobile health apps are used to improve the quality of health care. These apps are changing the current scenario in health care, and their numbers are increasing.

We wanted to perform an analysis of the current status of mobile health technologies and apps for medical emergencies. We aimed to synthesize the existing body of knowledge to provide relevant insights for this topic. Moreover, we wanted to identify common threads and gaps to support new challenging, interesting, and relevant research directions.

We reviewed the main relevant papers and apps available in the literature. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) methodology was used in this review. The search criteria were adopted using systematic methods to select papers and apps. On one hand, a bibliographic review was carried out in different search databases to collect papers related to each application in the health emergency field using defined criteria. On the other hand, a review of mobile apps in two virtual storage platforms (Google Play Store and Apple App Store) was carried out. The Google Play Store and Apple App Store are related to the Android and iOS operating systems, respectively.

In the literature review, 28 papers in the field of medical emergency were included. These studies were collected and selected according to established criteria. Moreover, we proposed a taxonomy using six groups of applications. In total, 324 mobile apps were found, with 192 identified in the Google Play Store and 132 identified in the Apple App Store.

We found that all apps in the Google Play Store were free, and 73 apps in the Apple App Store were paid, with the price ranging from US $0.89 to US $5.99. Moreover, 39% (11/28) of the included studies were related to warning systems for emergency services and 21% (6/28) were associated with disaster management apps.

• Android
• eHealth
• iOS
• mHealth
• medical emergencies
• mobile apps
• mobile health

Telephones, internet-connected devices (phablets, personal computers), chat platforms, and mobile apps (eg, Skype, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp) can be exploited for telemedicine applications. WhatsApp and similar apps are also widely used to facilitate clinical communication between physicians. Moreover, WhatsApp is used by emergency department (ED) physicians and consulting physicians to exchange medical information during ED consultations. This platform is regarded as a useful app in the consultation of dermatological and orthopedic cases. Preventing overcrowding in the ED is key to reducing the risk of disease transmission, and teleconsulting practice is thought to be effective in the diagnosis, treatment, and reduction of transmission risk of disease, most notably during the COVID-19 pandemic. Video consultation is highly recommended in some countries on the grounds that it is likely to reduce the risk of transmission. WhatsApp-like apps are among the video consultation platforms that are assumed to reduce the risk of contamination by minimizing patient-physician contact.

The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of WhatsApp video consultation on patient admission and discharge times in comparison to bedside consultation in the evaluation of potential patients with COVID-19 visiting a COVID-19 outpatient clinic during the pandemic.

Patients who presented to the ED COVID-19 outpatient clinic between March 11 and May 31, 2020, and for whom an infectious disease specialist was consulted (via WhatsApp or at bedside) were included in the study in accordance with the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Eventually, 54 patients whose consultations were performed via WhatsApp and 90 patients whose consultations were performed at bedside were included in our study.

The median length of stay in the ED of discharged patients amounted to 103 minutes (IQR 85-147.75) in the WhatsApp group and 196 minutes (IQR 141-215) in the bedside group. In this regard, the length of stay in the ED was found to be significantly shorter in the WhatsApp group than in the bedside group (P<.001). Among the consulted and discharged patients, 1 patient in each group tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 by polymerase chain reaction test and thus was readmitted and hospitalized (P=.62). The median length of stay of the inpatients in the ED was found to be 116.5 minutes (IQR 85.5-145.5) in the WhatsApp group and 132 minutes (IQR 102-168) in the bedside group. The statistical analysis of this time difference revealed that the length of stay in the ED was significantly shorter for patients in the WhatsApp group than in the bedside group (P=.04).

Consultation via WhatsApp reduces both contact time with patients with COVID-19 and the number of medical staff contacting the patients, which contributes greatly to reducing the risk of COVID-19 transmission. WhatsApp consultation may prove useful in clinical decision making as well as in shortening process times. Moreover, it does not result in a decreased accuracy rate. The shortened discharge and hospitalization timespans also decreased the length of stay in the ED, which can have an impact on minimizing ED crowding.

ClinicalTrials.gov NCT04645563; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04645563.

• COVID-19
• ED crowding
• WhatsApp
• clinic
• communication
• consultation
• emergency department
• infectious disease
• messaging
• telemedicine

• WhatsApp
• hand surgery
• smartphone
• vascularity

• Emergency medicine specialists
• Posterior-anterior chest x-ray
• Smartphone

ST-elevated myocardial infarction (STEMI) is a critical and time-sensitive emergency. The survival depends on prompt initiation of treatment requiring high precision and multi-level coordination between healthcare staff. The use of a mobile application may facilitate prompt management and shorten the door-to-balloon time by capturing information at the point of care and provide immediate feedback to all healthcare staff involved in STEMI management.

The objective of the present study has two primary components: (i) to explore the suggestions and opinions of stakeholders in the development of a novel mobile app for code activation in management of STEMI patients (ii) to find out the healthcare workers’ expectations including facilitating steps and challenges in the activation process of the proposed mobile app.

Unstructured interviews were conducted with key informants (n = 2) to identify all stakeholders, who also helped in developing the interview protocol and prototype designs. In-depth, semi-structured, open-ended, face to face interviews were conducted on 22 stakeholders involved in managing STEMI patients. All interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Data were analyzed using ATLAS.ti 8 software, allowing themes and subthemes to emerge.

The 22 participants included in the study were cardiology physicians (n = 3), emergency consultants (n = 4), emergency room (ER) senior nurses (n = 10), and cardiac catheterization lab staff (n = 5). The main themes identified during analysis were workflow and the App. The themes identified from the interviews surrounding the App were: 1) facilitating ideas 2) management steps needed 3) features 4) preferred code activation method 5) steps of integration 6) possible benefits of the App 7) barriers and 8) possible solutions to the suggested barriers. Most of the interviewed stakeholders expressed their acceptance after viewing the proposed mobile app prototype.

The study identified the mandatory features and the management steps needed from the stakeholder’s perspectives. The steps for integrating the current paper-based workflow with the suggested mobile app were identified. The expected benefits of the App may include improved and faster management, accuracy, better communication, and improvement in data quality. Moreover, the possible barriers might comprise of doubtful acceptability, device-related issues, and time and data-related challenges.

• Cell phone
• Chest pain
• Mobile applications
• Patient management
• Qualitative research
• ST elevation myocardial infarction
• Software

Breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related death in the female population. Health education interventions based on the use of mobile technologies enable the development of health self-care skills and have emerged as alternative strategies for the control of breast cancer. In previous studies, WhatsApp has stood out as a useful tool in health education strategies; however, it has not yet been applied for breast cancer education.

This study aimed to analyze the potential of WhatsApp as a health education tool used to improve women's knowledge on the risk reduction of breast cancer. It also aimed to understand how women feel sensitized within the WhatsApp group throughout the intervention and how they incorporate information posted to improve knowledge about early detection and risk reduction methods.

The study involved a pre-post health educational intervention with 35 women (aged 45-69 years) included in a WhatsApp group to share information (audio, video, text, and images) over 3 weeks on the early detection and risk reduction of breast cancer. Data were collected through questionnaires on topics related to risk reduction, as well as qualitative content analysis of group interactions. Effectiveness and feasibility were analyzed through conversations and the comparison of the scores obtained in the questionnaires before and after the intervention.

A total of 293 messages were exchanged (moderator 120 and users 173). The average scores of the participants were 11.21 and 13.68 points before and after the educational intervention, respectively, with sufficient sample evidence that the difference was significant (P<.001). The intervention enabled women to improve their knowledge on all topics addressed, especially “myths and truths,” “incidence,” “clinical manifestations,” and “protective factors.” Some themes emerged from the interactions in the group, including group dynamics, general doubts, personal narratives, religious messages, daily news, and events.

The use of groups for women in WhatsApp for health education purposes seems to be a viable alternative in strategies on breast cancer control, especially as it provides a space for the exchange of experiences and disinhibition. However, the need for a moderator to answer the questions and the constant distractions by members of the group represent important limitations that should be considered when improving this strategy.

• WhatsApp
• breast cancer
• cancer education
• mHealth

• Facebook
• continuous professional education
• dementia
• social network sites

• Dementia/epidemiology
• Education, Continuing/methods
• Female
• Health Education/methods
• Health Personnel/education
• Humans
• Male
• Pilot Projects
• Social Media/standards

The disruption to healthcare provision as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic has compelled us to streamline healthcare delivery. This has given us an opportunity to implement healthcare technology, reform inter-disciplinary collaboration and ultimately enhance patient care. We discuss some of the advances made by the foot and ankle department at our hospital. These innovations have broad applicability and will hopefully ignite discussion amoung a number of healthcare teams about improving the future care of their patients.

• COVID-19
• Healthcare technology
• Inter-disciplinary teams
• Orthopaedic service adaptation
• Public health

• communication
• hospitals
• medical informatics
• smartphone

• Application
• Communication
• Instant messaging
• Medical information
• Siilo
• Smartphone
• whatsApp

• WhatsApp
• e-health
• legal/legislation
• patient communication
• telehealth
• telemedicine

Specialty consultation is a critical aspect of emergency department (ED) practice, and a delay in providing consultation might have a significant clinical effect and worsen ED overcrowding. Although mobile electronic medical records (EMR) are being increasingly used and are known to improve the workflow of health care providers, limited studies have evaluated their effectiveness in real-life clinical scenarios.

For this study, we aimed to determine the association between response duration to an ED specialty consultation request and the frequency of mobile EMR use.

This retrospective study was conducted in an academic ED in Seoul, South Korea. We analyzed EMR and mobile EMR data from May 2018 to December 2018. Timestamps of ED consultation requests were retrieved from a PC-based EMR, and the response interval was calculated. Doctors’ log frequencies were obtained from the mobile EMR, and we merged data using doctors’ deidentification numbers. Pearson’s product-moment correlation was performed to identify this association. The primary outcome was the relationship between the frequency of mobile EMR usage and the time interval from ED request to consultation completion by specialty doctors. The secondary outcome was the relationship between the frequency of specialty doctors’ mobile EMR usage and the response time to consultation requests.

A total of 25,454 consultations requests were made for 15,555 patients, and 252 specialty doctors provided ED specialty consultations. Of the 742 doctors who used the mobile EMR, 208 doctors used it for the specialty consultation process. After excluding the cases lacking essential information, 21,885 consultations with 208 doctors were included for analysis. According to the mobile EMR usage pattern, the average usage frequency of all users was 13.3 logs/day, and the average duration of the completion of the specialty consultation was 51.7 minutes. There was a significant inverse relationship between the frequency of mobile EMR usage and time interval from ED request to consultation completion by specialty doctors (coefficient=–0.19; 95% CI –0.32 to –0.06; P=.005). Secondary analysis with the response time was done. There was also a significant inverse relationship between the frequency of specialty doctors’ mobile EMR usage and the response time to consultation requests (coefficient=–0.18; 95% CI –0.30 to –0.04; P=.009).

Our findings suggest that frequent mobile EMR usage is associated with quicker response time to ED consultation requests.

• electronic medical record
• emergency department
• mobile health
• time efficiency

• Knowledge translation
• Medical education
• Social media

• Education, Medical/methods
• Humans
• Social Media/trends
• Translational Research, Biomedical/instrumentation
• Translational Research, Biomedical/methods
• Translational Research, Biomedical/trends

• Communication
• Oral surgery
• WhatsApp

• Adult
• Argentina
• Female
• Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice
• Humans
• Male
• Middle Aged
• Mobile Applications/statistics & numerical data
• Practice Guidelines as Topic
• Psoriasis/diagnosis
• Psoriasis/therapy
• Rural Population/statistics & numerical data
• Surveys and Questionnaires
• Telemedicine/standards
• Telemedicine/statistics & numerical data

• Age Factors
• Attention
• Cell Phone
• Communication Barriers
• Ethnicity
• Female
• Humans
• Male
• Medical History Taking
• Physician-Patient Relations
• Sex Factors
• Triage

The increasing use of messaging applications such as WhatsApp for both social and personal purposes has determined an increase in the widespread use of these technologies, even in healthcare. A growing number of healthcare professionals have adopted WhatsApp in their daily work in order to share information with peers and patients. Past research has highlighted the advantages and disadvantages of WhatsApp usage in healthcare settings; in particular two positions appear to coexist in the scientific debate: those that expose and underline all of the positive aspects of the phenomenon, and those which also highlight the negative aspects, linked in particular to the clinical risks for patients, data security and privacy protection. The main objective of this study was to assess if and how individual and organizational determinants can trigger or inhibit the use of WhatsApp in a hospital setting, and which variables managers can exploit to guide professionals’ behaviors. Data were collected through a survey administered to physicians and nurses in an Italian University Hospital in Rome; a total of 191 high-quality responses were received. The results show that WhatsApp is widely used in the Hospital, and that its use is mainly due to the perception of numerous advantages and benefits reported in clinical practice. Moreover, an interplay exists between organizational and individual factors in determining the use of WhatsApp between healthcare professionals and with patients. In particular, individual factors play a key role as determinants of the use of WhatsApp; healthcare professionals use this technology mainly based on its perceived usefulness. Instead, organizational factors play a secondary role; they do not have a direct influence on the use of WhatsApp, but always act through individual factors. This study is the first to analyses the influence of individual and organizational determinants of WhatsApp usage in the hospital setting, and provides hospital managers with important information in order to manage this phenomenon and implement adequate strategies to exploit its potential increase.

• Communication
• Delivery of Health Care
• Female
• Health Communication/methods
• Health Personnel
• Hospitals
• Humans
• Male
• Mobile Applications/trends
• Organizations
• Physicians
• Surveys and Questionnaires
• Text Messaging/trends

The referral process in acute care remains challenging in many areas including burn care. Mobile phone apps designed explicitly for medical referrals and consultations could streamline the referral process by using structured templates and integrating features specific to different specialties. However, as these apps are competing with commercial chat services, usability becomes a crucial factor for successful uptake.

The aim of this study was to assess the usability of a mobile phone app for remote consultations and referrals of burn injuries.

A total of 24 emergency doctors and 4 burns consultants were recruited for the study. A mixed-methods approach was used including a usability questionnaire and a think-aloud interview. Think-aloud sessions were video-recorded, and content analysis was undertaken with predefined codes relating to the following 3 themes: ease of use, usefulness of content, and technology-induced errors.

The users perceived the app to be easy to use and useful, but some problems were identified. Issues relating to usability were associated with navigation, such as scrolling and zooming. Users also had problems in understanding the meaning of some icons and terminologies. Sometimes, some users felt limited by predefined options, and they wanted to be able to freely express their clinical findings.

We found that users faced problems mainly with navigation when the app did not work in the same way as the other apps that were frequently used. Our study also resonates with previous findings that when using standardized templates, the systems should also allow the user to express their clinical findings in their own words.

• South Africa
• burns
• emergency medicine
• mHealth
• mobile phone
• referral and consultation
• teleconsultations
• think-aloud
• usability evaluation
• video analysis

Current advances within medical technology show great potential from a global health perspective. Inexpensive, effective solutions to common problems within diagnostics, medical procedures and access to medical information are emerging within almost all fields of medicine. The innovations can benefit health care both in resource-limited and in resource-rich settings. However, there is a big gap between the proof-of-concept stage and implementation. This article will give examples of promising solutions, with special focus on mobile image- and sensor-based diagnostics. We also discuss how technology and frugal innovations could be made sustainable and widely available. Finally, a list of critical factors for success is presented, based on both our own experiences and the literature.

• Mobile health
• diagnostic imaging
• global health
• health resources
• mHealth for Improved Access and Equity in Health Care
• technological innovations

• Burns
• Emergency medicine
• Qualitative research
• Remote consultation
• South Africa
• mHealth

• Adult
• Attitude of Health Personnel
• Burns/therapy
• Clinical Decision-Making/methods
• Critical Care/methods
• Emergency Medicine/methods
• Female
• Humans
• Male
• Qualitative Research
• Referral and Consultation
• South Africa
• Telemedicine/methods

• Marianne and Marcus Wallenberg Foundation