As Dr. Francesc Saigí, head of the project and director of the UOC's Master's program in Telemedicine, explains, "This international network for cooperation in R&D and education will deepen and strengthen the telemedicine collaboration that many RITMOS members have already been undertaking. Now, we will have funding for four years, the participation of two strategic institutional and technological partners—the Mobile World Capital Barcelona (MWCB) Foundation and Telefónica—and the active collaboration of the Pan American Health Organization's (PAHO/WHO) eHealth Program, the World Health Organization's regional office for the Americas."
The RITMOS project will receive €80,000 in funding, approved last December by the Ibero-American Program of Science and Technology for Development (CYTED). The network comprises 13 working groups and 58 researchers from Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Spain. According to Saigí, “the initiative will develop strategies in Latin America (LA) that will enable the effective integration of mobile technologies into health services (mHealth) to facilitate access to health systems, improve lifestyles, focus on disease prevention, and empower patients to manage chronic diseases themselves.”
The project director highlights the complementarity of the participating members as a strength of RITMOS: “Latin American universities and research centers will help us identify priority needs; MWCB and Telefónica will contribute their expertise in developing mobile applications and technologies that enable health data sharing; and the UOC, in close collaboration with PAHO/WHO, will provide the necessary knowledge and policy tools to translate the potential of mobile health into concrete experiences within Latin American health services.”
Two events are planned for 2015: the network launch meeting, to be held in the first quarter at the UOC's Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3) headquarters, and the 2015 RITMOS-International Workshop, which will take place in Barcelona in mid-October 2015 to present the project's R&D&I progress and results. This workshop will be held jointly with the Fifth International Symposium on Telemedicine.
mHealth, an emerging field.
The application of mobile technologies in health (mHealth) is an emerging field that has arisen as a complementary approach to healthcare delivery. The ubiquitous connectivity of mobile networks, thanks to satellite navigation technologies, and the proliferation of mobile devices, especially smartphones (the growth in wireless subscriptions has reached more than 6 billion mobile subscribers worldwide) have fostered the integration of mobile health and wellness.
According to Saigí, “mHealth solutions can contribute to the efficiency of healthcare delivery through real-time communication with patients and the sharing of application user data. The big data analytics generated by mobile health can also help us improve disease prevention, as it allows us to build a more accurate and comprehensive picture of diseases and patient behaviors.” Finally, and equally important, mHealth solutions support the evolving role of patients, from passive to more active participants, while simultaneously enhancing their responsibility for their own health.
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