EMMA
Project information
Project duration
-
Funded by
Business Finland
Project coordinator
University of Oulu
Unit and faculty
Contact information
Project leader
- Professor, 6G enabling sustainable society, Digital Health
Contact person
Researchers
Project description
The potential of mHealth is enormous and yet the integration of these technologies into healthcare systems has remained an ongoing challenge. Patient-generated health data represents a great opportunity for remote patient monitoring and timely interventions but interoperability between systems healthcare is far from fully realized. The types of health data standards available include specific categories, content, privacy and security elements. Google Fit and Apple HealthKit allow mobile developers to aggregate health-tracking data to varying degrees of success. These developments have created opportunities to both innovate and deliver care.
Currently, mHealth development initiatives face the following problems:
- Development requires varying input and would benefit from lightweight tools to demonstrate ideas for different stakeholders (e.g. healthcare professionals and patients)
- Healthcare domain regulations might scare potential developers and bring obstacles to those not familiar with them
- Building mHealth solutions from scratch requires resources and infrastructure to make them mature enough for validation, as best practices and know-how for mHealth development are missing. Currently, it costs average $425.000 of to develop a mHealth app.
- Businesses with applicable partial solutions for health have difficulties integrating their solution with domain knowledge, as integration of scattered technologies and assets is not supported.
- mHealth development requires knowledge about global, European and national infrastructures.
The vision of this co-creation project is to prove that there is a way to create a modular low code development platform that allows compiling mHealth apps from modules for specific purposes. The EMMA mHealth platform can be used in a global context to help research and business to demonstrate and validate mHealth ideas. The platform links solution developers with domain experts by providing a platform for actors who create solutions for mHealth and actors who have needs for mHealth. It provides businesses who are creating solutions a channel to enter the mHealth market. The project will use a generative design research process that will facilitate answering the following research questions:
- How to promote the interdisciplinary development of mHealth solutions?
- How to connect mHealth needs with technical enablers?
- How to create a low-code development environment for modular composition of mHealth solutions?