Mobile Health Services: Past, Present, Future

Aims: Nowadays mobile network technologies are available for people more than any other systems and is quickly penetrated in public and private sectors. One of the application of mobile technologies is to use as a tool for health monitoring, and many programs are made for this purpose. The aim of this study is to review the mobile heath concept, advantages and types of mobile health softwares, statistics about how to use and development of mobile heath industry, checking the variety of users and types of applications which will use in the future and is used now.
This review study conducted in 2016, and its information are obtained from searching in Google Scholar, Scopus, Iran Medex, Magiran, Medlib, SID, Web of Science, PubMed, Noormags, Science Direct, Ebsco electronic databases.
Recent developements in mobile health programs provided many opportunities to improve people’s health and welfare. If mobile health applications have been used in medical centers in Iran, it can be expected that in addition to reduce costs for people and medical errors, it might cause treatment process to be faster with better quality, easier access to medical cares, providing health cares to outlying areas, improving responsiveness to patients, promoting health cares and remote treatment and etc.
The process of using mobile health applications will be determined through this study and also there will be a way for better planning for greater use of this applications. Nowadays mobile health applications have many advocates and if these tools have been used in Iran health centers, many of communication problems between medical staff and patients will be solved.