Preface

Mobile Health Technologies, also known as mHealth technologies, have emerged, amongst healthcare providers, as the ultimate *Technologies-of-Choice* for the 21st century in delivering not only transformative change in healthcare delivery, but also critical health information to different communities of practice in integrated healthcare information systems. mHealth technologies nurture seamless platforms and pragmatic tools for managing pertinent health information across the continuum of different healthcare providers. mHealth technologies commonly utilize mobile medical devices, monitoring and wireless devices, and/or teleme‐ dicine in healthcare delivery and health research. Today, mHealth technologies provide op‐ portunities to record and monitor conditions of patients with chronic diseases such as asthma, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Diseases (COPD) and diabetes mellitus. The intent of this book is to enlighten readers about the theories and applications of mHealth technolo‐ gies in the healthcare domain. The book is divided into two sections, with Section 1 consist‐ ing of four chapters and Section 2 consisting of two chapters.

Section 1, including Chapter 1 through 4, illustrates the opportunities, benefits and challeng‐ es of mHealth technologies in managing patients with chronic diseases. Chapter 1 reviews recent progress in the field of wearable technologies, with a focus on key solutions for fall detection and prevention, Parkinson's disease assessment, cardiac disease, blood pressure and blood glucose management. Chapter 2 explores the use of mHealth technologies for the empowerment of patients with diabetes so as to improve their health outcomes and wellbeing. Chapter 3 explores the opportunities and challenges in adopting telemedicine pro‐ grams for the management of patients with respiratory diseases. Chapter 4 presents opportunities and challenges of monitoring chronic disease patients with mHealth technolo‐ gies.

Section 2, including Chapter 5 and 6, illustrates the applications of mHealth technologies in streamlining the management of chronic diseases. Chapter 5 discuses a mobile Cloud-based blood pressure application for healthcare education. Chapter 6 presents the development of a mHealth application called SmartWoundCare, designed to document and assess chronic wounds on Smartphones and tablets.

> **Dr. Wilfred Bonney,** University of Dundee, Scotland, UK

**Section 1**

**mHealth Theories**
