Mobile Health (mHealth): Modern Accessibility to Healthcare

    Mobile health, also known as mHealth, utilizes mobile technology in order to provide medical services to millions of people. The reason mHealth apps were created was to allow individuals to play a more significant role in their health by accessing healthcare services through something that millions of people use every day, which is technology. The rise of these mHealth apps began when the combination of handheld devices and clod computer started to become more common among the population because then there could also be a way to access health-related apps 24/7. So, through this realization, it was evident that mHealth was an essential topic that should be discussed for the research paper. Furthermore, the fact that with the rise of mHealth applications, there have been downsides to this development and those include security concerns that include medical information being leaked by hackers, and ethical concerns are also widespread because there is more medical information on the cloud now than ever before. 

    Some concerns include security risks, where medical information could be hacked because so much data is being run through the cloud and a lot of people still do not have 2-factor authentications for their apps. Furthermore, the legal and ethical issues that arise from mHealth apps address the fact that 3rd party companies are extracting the medical information of millions of users to better their platform, which raises the question of whether or not mHealth apps may be providing service in an ethical way. Also, social implications of mHealth apps include the fact that people are staying more healthy now since they have access to such services everyday, but the downside is that people may obtain the wrong medical information online or may be paranoid or too obsessed with these apps.

    As can be analyzed, mHealth apps are used among millions of people across the world in order to monitor their health and are also used by healthcare providers to connect with their patients and access medical records. With the fact that people can access mHealth apps through the touch of a finger, this also means that security needs to be much tighter because sensitive data cannot afford to be leaked to hackers. Furthermore, these mobile health apps face ethical and legal challenges because again, this private information does get shared with unauthorized 3rd parties but are challenging to fight against because there is no law that specifically healthcare apps. With the security, ethical, and legal concerns, there does come a bright side that society is coming together to improve their health altogether and be active in maintaining physical and mental well-being. Overall, mHealth apps will be staying with us in the long term, which is why we need to find the most optimal way to utilize these apps while securely taking care of sensitive information.