Dear Brendon and all,
"I've been thinking about the questions we're looking at over the next while. I've summarised them for myself as optimising the positive aspects of informal mHealth and minimising / mitigating the negative aspects, for healthcare workers and systems. They're important and useful questions. Especially in terms of strategies that could be developed."
Yes this is how I see the challenge overall: to optimise the positive aspects of informal mobile phone use by health workers (which personally I find easiest to think in terms of use of personal phones for work purposes, although this is not the whole story), and minimising the negative aspects.
"I think we should be open to interrelated and systemic causes. So that we can connect ideas at the level of the individual and clinics to the healthcare system more effectively. I wonder if a question dealing with these interrelationships may not be a useful addition?"
Yes indeed, we can articulate an additional question. Currently our five questions for this part of our exploration are:
Topic 1: How can we maximise the positive aspects of informal mobile phone use (flexibility, convenience etc.)?
Topic 2: What strategies could be used to address the ways in which informal mobile phone use can blur boundaries between healthcare workers’ personal and work lives?
Topic 3: What strategies could be used to address the potential for informal mobile phone use to undermine patients’ privacy and confidentiality and the legal implications of informal use for healthcare workers?
Topic 4: What strategies could be used to help ensure that the healthcare system is not undermined when information is not formally shared and stored as a consequence of informal use?
Topic 5: What strategies could be used to address the cost implications of informal mobile phone use for healthcare workers?
https://www.hifa.org/news/mhealth-innovate-exploring-healthcare-workers-...
Brendon, would you or anyone like to suggest an additional question or approach?
If anyone has thoughts on this or any other questions we could address, please send your thoughts to: hifa@hifaforums.org
Many thanks, Neil
HIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is coordinator of HIFA (Healthcare Information For All), a global health community that brings all stakeholders together around the shared goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information. HIFA has 20,000 members in 180 countries, interacting in four languages and representing all parts of the global evidence ecosystem. HIFA is administered by Global Healthcare Information Network, a UK-based nonprofit in official relations with the World Health Organization. Email: neil@hifa.org