Mobile Health Technology vs. Email Communications in Health Promotion - Essay Sample

Introduction

Mobile health technology and email communications have an essential role to play in future healthcare promotion in the workplace. There has been an explosive development of mobile applications which has improved synchronous interactions and presents a novel approach of sharing health information which can improve employee's health outcomes in Americold Logistics, LLC. Occupational related stress in the working environment has been noted as a significant barrier to improved employee performance. This literature review will assess quantitative research to evaluate different mobile and email based approaches which can be used in sharing health-related information and determine their significance in eliminating occupational stress.

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Literature Review

Adoption of Mobile Health Technology in Patient/Physician Communication

Mobile health applications are increasingly becoming an approach to health promotion through information delivery. According to Krebs & Duncan (2015), in a cross-sectional survey of 1604 mobile users in the United States, half of the entire research population possessed a healthcare application in their phones with fitness and nutrition being the most sourced health information. The study by Krebs & Duncan (2015) aimed at generalizing the population demographics to be able to factor the ordinary people by the use of Toluna quota sampling which made it possible to include 50% female, 50% high school graduates, 60% of the study population earning $50,000 and a significance balance of the population racial groups. The incorporation of the entire American community in the study by Krebs & Duncan (2015) increased the overall reliability of the results to represent the total population in the United States using mobile health applications to assess healthcare information. The use of mobile apps in healthcare is still in the early stages due to the sophistication of the platforms and their limited functionality (Krebs & Duncan, 2015). Ernsting, Dombrowski, Oedekoven, LO, Kanzler, Kuhlmey, & Gellert (2017) concurs with Krebs & Duncan (2015) that mobile health applications are the best opportunity to change and manage health-related behaviors especially for patients with chronic conditions.

The inability of the mobile applications developers to design their applications by factoring the application users opinions has further limited the ability of mobile apps to take off a significant health information directories in a population that is increasingly becoming digitized (Krebs & Duncan, 2015). In both Krebs & Duncan (2015) and Ernsting et al. (2017) studies, a majority of the study participants (60%+) recognized using mobile applications as a source for healthcare information. The preferences for the mobile health applications varied across the study population and the choice depended on the functionality of the mobile apps with a high number of people using the mobile platforms at least once per day which indicates that most of the population are adopting mobile applications for health on a daily basis (Krebs & Duncan, 2015). However, Krebs & Duncan (2015) and Ernsting et al. (2017) research noted that most of the populations using mobile-based applications accessed information regarding fitness, nutrition, and weight loss more often compared to other health information. Medical monitoring and medical care systems communication was significantly poor in all the populations under both Ernsting et al. (2017) and Krebs & Duncan (2015) which indicates a significant need to create mobile applications with expanded usage such as communication with medical healthcare providers and to monitor health vitals especially for patients with chronic conditions. The use of mobile technology is increasingly becoming common in the American population with most applications being information based and with limited functionality. The surveys noted that although most of the health application users used their applications once a day there was limited specialization and optimization of data based on the user needs. However, in both instances, the quantitative research identified a positive acceptance of mobile health application usage in the general population with the research adopting a spatial distribution across all racial and socioeconomic demographics of the community to increase the analysis results actual representation of the American society.

Healthcare Mobile Information Adoption in Practitioner Decision Support

Camlek (2011) shows that there is an increase in the adoption of mobile technology in the provision of information to healthcare providers which is a basis for evidence-based decision making especially in areas of continuous care. As such, healthcare providers can easily access patient referential information through the mobile phone devices which can be complemented by patient access to health-based applications to provide support to patients with chronic conditions. Converging mobile applications with health function such as mHealth can be utilized to improve care and the ability of the healthcare providers to monitor the patients which is a proactive approach of improving care primarily for patients with chronic diseases and also in organization or workplace oriented programs. Telemedicine is also identified as a significant health mobile application with a more expanded function that allows interactive and audiovisual media interactions between the patients and the healthcare providers. Such an app allows for real-time synchronization between the patient and the healthcare providers and can be used in both the provision of care and monitoring patient progress (Camlek, 2011). Unlike Krebs & Duncan (2015) research which points the ability to use the mobile application to deliver health-related information in the study by Camlek (2011) shows a much-extended application and use of mobile apps to offer support to health care providers in decision making and also to monitor patients with chronic conditions. This research depicts that future convergence of both interactive and information oriented mobile applications will improve the adoption of mobile technology by the population as well as improve the overall functionality of the applications. Organizations such as Americold Logistics, LLC can adopt a more advanced mobile app with the convergence of providing information and also medical support to improve the workers' overall health outcomes.

Privacy Issues in Mobile Texting in the Healthcare Context

Research by Prochaska, Bird, Chadaga, & Arora (2015) used a cross-sectional multi-institutional survey to assess privacy issues when text messaging is used as a communication platform. Most of the participants in the research by Prochaska et al. (2015) preferred using text messaging in communication with healthcare providers. 71.7% of the respondents remarked that text messaging is very efficient whereas 79.8% of the participants associated the use of approach in communication with its high ease. However, Prochaska et al. (2015) note that a majority of the subjects in the research preferred the hospital paging system due to its security and only 20.6% participants considered text messaging safe for communication. This study concluded that although text messaging is deemed to be prone to security threats, it has a high convenience and ease to use score amongst the participants. There are tradeoffs between security concerns and the improvement of the service coordination and delivery where residents used text messages to communicate. This depicts an opportunity and recommendation to develop better text messaging security which can improve the overall communication convenience which is limited by the current security concerns.

The study by Prochaska et al. (2015) is very valuable in this context because it carries out comparative research between different communication platforms such as paging, emails, phone, and text messaging. In the study, hospital paging and phone conversations were found to be most secure in terms of passing patient-related information whereas email and text messaging ranked the lowest in terms of security. However, irrespective of the risks, a majority of participants in Prochaska et al. (2015) study confirmed to have received information with the patient name, initials, or medical record number using text messaging which indicates that it is most preferred at the resident level for communication purposes.

Electronic Mail Use in Health Promotion

A cross-sectional survey by Singh, Fox, Petersen, Shethia, & Street Jr (2009) shows that there is an increase in access to the internet by older patients which helps to reduce the gap between technology applications adoption in healthcare. Older patients according to Singh et al. (2009) have greater access to the internet, and the cross-sectional study shows more significant use of non-healthcare email by older patients. All the patient's subjects in Singh et al. (2009) study were 65 years and above, and only 1.3% of the study population reported using emails for communication with healthcare providers. However, although the small study population said to be using email to communicate with physicians, there was high enthusiasm to use email amongst the old patients. Whereas most of the young people are tech savvy and can be able to use mobile applications, it is quite a challenge for the past generation who are more capable of communicating with their physicians via mail. However, whereas Camlek (2011) reported that many physicians are more willing to use mobile applications to monitor and share patient information in Singh et al. (2009) study only half of the physicians were ready to use emails to communicate to their patients. The odds of using email to communicate with physicians declined in patients who did not use email for other purposes with males having a high odd of using email compared to females in the study (Singh et al., 2009). The research by Singh et al. (2009) shows that email communication is rarely used as an approach of communication between patients and physicians and the half of physicians indicated less desire to use email to communicate with the patients with only 10% of the surveyed physicians showing high enthusiasm in this mode of communication. This can be attributed to the cumbersome nature of using email communication because it does not allow instant feedback and it is poor in terms of the interaction of the people engaged compared to the use of mobile application because of its asynchronous nature.

In another study by Newhouse, Lupianez-Villanueva, Codagnone, & Atherton (2015), that assessed email communication in 14 European countries there was a significant variation in the use of emails across the nations. The study by Newhouse et al. (2015) confirms that the use of the internet in healthcare has grown tremendously with most people accessing factual information and sharing their experiences through the internet. However, the researchers noted that the use of asynchronous communication in health-related environments was highly underdeveloped in European nations. The asynchronous communication such as email which refers to non-concurrent interaction was less utilized compared to the synchronous communication which is mobile based such as phone consultation which allows real-time interaction between the patient and the physicians (Newhouse et al., 2015). The study by Newhouse et al. (2015) recognizes that email use has been encouraged by different nations through policy and non-formal initiation by healthcare organizations. For instance, in Denmark and the United States patients can communicate with their physician...