mHealth and COVID-19: A Bibliometric Study

Abstract

mHealth, i.e., using mobile computing and communication technologies in health care, has played an increasingly important role in the provision of medical care and undertaking self-health monitoring and management in the past two decades. Specifically, it becomes critically important for health care delivery when governments have been forced to impose quarantines and lockdowns during the spikes in COVID-19 cases. Therefore, this research focuses on academic publications including journal articles, reviews, and conference papers on the use of mHealth during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a keyword search on “mHealth” (or “mobile health”) and “COVID-19” on 7 January 2023 in Scopus, it was found that 1125 documents were officially published between 2020 and 2022. Among these 1125 documents, 1042 documents were journal articles, reviews, and conference papers. Researchers in the US produced 335 articles, followed by UK researchers with 119 articles, and Chinese researchers with 79 articles. Researchers affiliated with Harvard Medical School published the largest number of articles (31), followed by researchers of University College London with 21 articles and Massachusetts General Hospital with 20 articles. Co-occurrence of keywords analysis revealed four clusters, namely “COVID-19, mHealth, mobile applications, and public health”, “adult, adolescent, mental health, and major clinical study”, “human, pandemic, and epidemiology”, and “telemedicine, telehealth, and health care delivery”. Implications of this study are given.

Evidence-Based Implementation of the Family-Centered Model and the Use of Tele-Intervention in Early Childhood Services: A Systematic Review

“…The global health emergency caused by COVID-19 compromised the vast majority of methodologies and techniques that were carried out in a traditional, face-to-face manner, leading to a change in their modality [ 73 , 74 ]. In this context, protocols and guidelines were developed to facilitate this shift towards tele-intervention.…”

“…It also takes into account usability, effectiveness, competence and trust, factors that are relevant to what the authors call social validity. Other studies such as those by McCarthy et al, Popova et al, García-Ventura et al, du Plessis et al, Rose et al and Vilaseca et al[20,21,52,58,60,66] assess factors that have to do with the technical staff who carry out the intervention, seeking their professional validation.The global health emergency caused by COVID-19 compromised the vast majority of methodologies and techniques that were carried out in a traditional, face-to-face manner, leading to a change in their modality[73,74]. In this context, protocols and guidelines were developed to facilitate this shift towards tele-intervention.…”