Dear HIFA colleagues,
The mHealth-Innovate research is about 'informal use' which we have defined in our systematic review as 'healthcare workers’ use of mobile phones to support their work, using approaches that are initiated by the healthcare workers themselves and that are initially not standardized, regulated or endorsed by the health system or organization to which they belong.’
Some of these terms are open to interpretation, and there is perhaps a case for us to simplify and specify for the purpose of our current discussion. In practice, we may perhaps not need to invoke 'informal versus formal; initiated; standardized, regulated or endorsed'. Also, in practice we have been talking only about use of personal mobile phones, which is not specified in the definition.
There is perhaps a case for describing our subject more simply and specifically, as in: 'health workers' use of personal mobile phones for work purposes'.
This may not capture 100% of the research that has been done. For example use of a personal mobile phone to call home would be excluded, but such use is arguably peripheral to the research (and such use is also excluded from our original definition).
I look forward to your comments.
Best wishes, 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