This week I read “A multipronged evidence-based approach to implement mHealth for underserved HIV-infected populations” by Krishnan and Cravero. The article was about how mobile health technology can help people living with HIV. Mobile health is more accessible to people, and more cost effective. However, the article stated that mobile health is lacking because it is underutilized. The article focuses on underserved communities such as “prisoners, men who have sex with men (MSM), sex workers, individuals with substance use disorders (SUDs), injection drug users (IDUs), those with mental illnesses and neurocognitive impairment, and those facing structural barriers such as unemployment and homelessness”.
The purpose of the article was to investigate how mobile health technology can help those in underserved populations with HIV. One part of the research that stood out to me was the section where it talked about how 91% of the people surveyed were comfortable using mobile health applications. I am personally not completely comfortable with the idea of using a mobile health application. I have attempted to use mobile health applications in the past and I have found it to be very accessible, but I have struggled with getting results. It’s easy to use, but I had a lot of trouble getting in contact with an actual person that could help me out with my medical issues. I agree that mobile health applications are underutilized. From my experience, mobile health apps are not ready to replace traditional medical practices.
The studies showed that there was a real need and interest in mobile health for people with HIV. Some benefits include increased privacy and convenience. If this is implemented in the future, I hope that it is expanded to members of the LGBTQIA+ community and women. The element of increased privacy could really be helpful to people who feel ashamed to get treatment or validation such as trans people, who often avoid starting hormones because they aren’t anonymous. People who go to planned parenthood could also benefit a lot from mobile health technology. Even though there are laws against protesting outside of planned parenthood, it still happens and can be difficult for people to get treatment. I thought that it was really positive that this research paper not only focused on people with HIV, but specifically people that have less access to healthcare. This, in my opinion, should be how we go about providing healthcare in the future. We should focus much more on providing people with healthcare that do not have access to it, and I believe that advancing mobile healthcare products is the way to go. It’s easy to use, more accessible, and cheaper to operate and use.
Mobile health should be focused on improving accessibility for marginalized communities above all else. The biggest problem with mobile health right now is that it isn’t developed enough. We all know that it exists and that it has potential to be revolutionary in terms of fast and easy treatment, but it isn’t as developed as it could be.
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