health

This report examines issues at the heart of the rapidly evolving intersection of mobile phones and healthcare. It helps the reader to understand mHealth’s scope and implementation across developing regions, the health needs to which mHealth can be applied, and the mHealth applications that promise the greatest impact on heath care initiatives.

Mounting interest in the field of mHealth—the provision of health-related services via mobile communications— can be traced to the evolution of several interrelated trends. In many parts of the world, epidemics and a shortage of healthcare workers continue to present grave challenges for governments and health providers. Yet in these same places, the explosive growth of mobile communications over the past decade offers a new hope for the promotion of quality healthcare. Among those who had previously been left behind by the ‘digital divide,’ billions now have access to reliable technology.

This monograph is an introduction to participation in the context of the right to the highest attainable standard of health. A companion volume to Accountability and the right to the highest attainable standard of health (sometimes referred to as the "accountability monograph"), the monograph is intended to assist government health policy makers to understand the content and role of participation in the context of policy making and the right to health. The active and informed participation of people and groups in all health-related decisionmaking is a component of the right to the highest attainable standard of health.

The right to health places the well-being of people, groups, communities and populations at the centre of a health system. By doing so, implementation of the right can help to ensure that a health system is neither dominated by experts nor removed from the people it is meant to serve. In the context of health systems, this includes active and informed participation in the identification and development of health policy, as well as implementation and accountability. Clearly, participation has wide application in the context of the right to the highest attainable standard of health. In this preliminary monograph, the principal focus is placed on participation in the development of health policy, as a means of illustrating how active and informed participation can take place.