Improving public health preparedness and response through novel use of mobile technology

Title: “Improving Public Health Preparedness and Response through Novel Use of Mobile Technology” Background: Nearly 50% of American adults are smartphone owners (for younger adults, the percentage is even higher) and this percentage is on the rise. Continued growth over the next decade will offer dramatic new capabilities for public health preparedness and event response. Objective/Purpose: Provide solutions that assist federal, state, and local public health entities in developing a measurably higher level of preparedness for catastrophic public health events. Develop new event management capabilities designed to deliver ever greater impact as the percentage of smartphone ownership increases. Methods (Approach): Achieving enhanced preparedness and response capabilities requires careful planning and smooth execution of the plans during an event. One important factor is having meaningful and direct communication with the general public as an event unfolds to ensure smooth event execution. Smartphone technology can be directly applied to this problem and can help to form better relationships with the general public, raise awareness and increase adoption of mobile event management solutions. Smartphone characteristics available to be leveraged include voice, text, and email communications, application updating, the location-aware and location-independent nature of the devices, and capabilities for 2-way data collection and transfer. Results (e.g., Vision, Direction, etc.): Our approach recognizes smartphones as a disruptive technology that can be directly applied to response operations during public health events. With an installed base of applications, support can be tailored to provide features specific to a given public health event through just-in-time application updates. Embracing smartphone technology use during an event enables reporting by individuals to public health authorities, targeted communications, and improved management of response operations based on real-time location of responders, medical assets, and affected individuals.