mHealth technology utilization in the Arab world: a systematic review of systems, usage, and challenges

The rapid growth in mobile technology has provided an opportunity for the design and development of mobile health technologies in the Arab region. Nonetheless, available literature has not been able to provide information on the types of systems, use patterns and challenges faced during the implementation of mobile Health (mHealth) systems in the Arab countries. This lack of evidence-based study to classify mHealth technologies, use and possible obstacles has an important role in the continuous development, implementation and future research trends of mHealth technologies in the Arab world. This study filled the gap by way of a systematic review of previous studies conducted within a decade from seven online databases to explore the current evidence on the use of mHealth in the Arab countries. The findings from a systematic review of 31 studies classified the main mHealth systems into four categories: self-healthcare management systems, assisted healthcare systems, supervised healthcare systems and continuous monitoring systems. Self-healthcare management systems were the dominant mHealth solutions while continuous monitoring systems were the least utilized. Generally, there was a low usage level of m-health systems in the Arab world underpinned by challenges such as User interface (UI), cloud storage, platforms, quality of service (QoS), security and data acquisition.