Introduction: Social and Cultural Futures—The Everyday Use and Shifting Discourse of mHealth

Abstract

This book presents a range of studies into formal and informal mHealth initiatives from across the Asia region. The need for the book is clear-current mobile phone penetration in many Asian regions stands at well over 100% and in some cases has increased by up to 150-fold in the last 10 years (ITU, 2016). In response to this remarkable level of mobile adoption, the aim of the book is twofold: first, we wish to highlight how social and cultural research must play a more prominent role in understanding the impact of already existing, vernacular uses of mobile devices on mHealth programs. Second, in so doing, we wish to advance the research agenda for sociocultural approaches to mHealth by identifying key commonalities, challenges and points of variation manifest across the emerging body of mHealth work. The chapters in this book seek to achieve this aim by underlining the need to plan for the intricate social, institutional, political and communicative environments at the user level of a mHealth initiative. Our contributors include both established and emerging scholars as well as practitioners who have adopted sociocultural approaches within the mHealth domain. Their research highlights how an understanding of context can enable mHealth practitioners and policy makers to anticipate barriers or to perceive hitherto unnoticed possibilities that can make or break the successful use of personal mobile devices to achieve health outcomes.Across the Asia region, mobile devices are firmly established as an essential personal item even in many low-income regions. The mobile phone is no longer considered a 'new' medium and we contend that the future of many mHealth interventions in the Asia region will no longer be about trying to changing health Granado-Font, Ferré-Grau, & Montaña-Carreras, 2015). Such adaptation entails an implicit acknowledgment of the need for a diversification of research methodologies beyond conventional health research methods (Fiordelli, Diviani, & Schulz, 2013; PLoS Medicine Editors, 2013;Tomlinson, Rotheram-Borus, Swartz, & Tsai, 2013). It will also require skills in the application of social and cultural research to the design of mHealth initiatives in order to grasp and leverage the dynamic patterns of mobile usage by individuals and groups. A more detailed and site-sensitive insight into how devices, platforms and content are used at the local level will allow us to more reliably explore how mHealth innovation can achieve realistic and sustainable health outcomes. In particular, designers of mHealth interventions must pay further attention to the study of the informal processes that emerge outside-or on the fringes-of formal interventions, as mobile devices embed themselves ever further into the everyday lives of health workers, health seekers and-at times-health avoiders.A number of scholars have investigated the potential of mobile systems to addressing structural health challenges in the region including infectious disease, mental health or lifestyle disease (e.g. Brian and Ben-Zeev, 2014;...

5G common threads and challenges in emerging economies: the cases of Indonesia and Peru

“…In terms of Internet access: 87% of households have internet access at home (74% rural households vs. 89% urban) (ITU, 2022a); 66% of individuals are using the internet (64% female versus 69% male)—with the highest usage of 92% in the 15- to 24-year cohort (ITU, 2022a); there are 4.9 fixed broadband subscriptions versus 115 mobile broadband subscriptions respectively per 100 inhabitants; and, at least 88% of the population is covered by a 4G network (ITU, 2022a). There is not only high level of reliance upon and consumption of mobile services in Indonesia but also relatively low levels of associated data consumption—thus a complex picture of digital connectivities, infrastructures, and inequalities (Baulch et al, 2018; Dinakrisma et al, 2022; Lim, 2018; Puspitasari and Ishii, 2016).…”