The value of mHealth for managing chronic conditions

Abstract

Chronic conditions place a high cost burden on the healthcare system and deplete the quality of life for millions of Americans. Digital innovations such as mobile health (mHealth) technology can be used to provide efficient and effective healthcare. In this research we explore the use of mobile technology to manage chronic conditions such as diabetes and hypertension. There is ample empirical evidence in the healthcare literature showing that patients who use mHealth observe improvement in their health. However, an analytical study that quantifies the benefit of using mHealth is lacking. The benefit of using mHealth depends on many factors such as the current health condition of the patient, pattern of disease progression, frequency of measurement and intervention, the effectiveness of intervention, and the cost of measuring. Stochastic modeling is a suitable approach to take these factors into consideration to evaluate the benefit of mHealth. In this paper, we model the disease progression with the help of a Markov chain and quantify the benefits of measuring and intervention taking into consideration the above-mentioned factors. We compare two different modes for measuring and intervention, mHealth mode and conventional office visit mode, and evaluate the impact of these factors on health outcome.

Keywords: Chronic conditions; Markov models; mHealth.