Previously submitted to: JMIR Diabetes (no longer under consideration since May 14, 2018)
Date Submitted: Jan 2, 2018
Open Peer Review Period: Jan 4, 2018 - May 14, 2018
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
NOTE: This is an unreviewed Preprint
Warning: This is a unreviewed preprint (What is a preprint?). Readers are warned that the document has not been peer-reviewed by expert/patient reviewers or an academic editor, may contain misleading claims, and is likely to undergo changes before final publication, if accepted, or may have been rejected/withdrawn (a note "no longer under consideration" will appear above).
Peer review me: Readers with interest and expertise are encouraged to sign up as peer-reviewer, if the paper is within an open peer-review period (in this case, a "Peer Review Me" button to sign up as reviewer is displayed above). All preprints currently open for review are listed here. Outside of the formal open peer-review period we encourage you to tweet about the preprint.
Citation: Please cite this preprint only for review purposes or for grant applications and CVs (if you are the author).
Final version: If our system detects a final peer-reviewed "version of record" (VoR) published in any journal, a link to that VoR will appear below. Readers are then encourage to cite the VoR instead of this preprint.
Settings: If you are the author, you can login and change the preprint display settings, but the preprint URL/DOI is supposed to be stable and citable, so it should not be removed once posted.
Submit: To post your own preprint, simply submit to any JMIR journal, and choose the appropriate settings to expose your submitted version as preprint.
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Mobile Health (m-Health) for Diabetes Self-Management in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: Clinical Challenges, Implementation Strategies and Policy Barriers
Diabetes mellitus is a major chronic disease burden and healthcare challenge in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom has one of the highest diabetes prevalence levels globally. This high prevalence levels in the Kingdom is compounded with increasing economic health burden resulting from the diabetes related complications and their treatment costs. The development of m-health system and implementation strategies tailored for Saudi patients and healthcare system is important and timely to alleviate some of these healthcare and economic burdens. However, these strategies face a myriad of economic, human, social and cultural barriers that hinder the progress in this important area of healthcare delivery. The Kingdom has one of highest penetration of smart phone, Internet and social networking users in the Gulf area. Yet, this popularity is not translated appropriately to tangible mobile health (m-Health) solutions for diabetes care and self management. Also, to date no relevant m-Health policy and implementation strategy or initiative exists within the different healthcare sectors within the Kingdom. The digital savvy society and patient population is well poised to embrace these digital health solutions. However, the adoption of m-Health in the Kingdom remains low and lacks the support of the decisions makers and healthcare providers. In this paper, a perspective of mobile health for diabetes self management in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is presented. An overview of the current status of m-Health for diabetes self management and the clinical evidence of the work in this area within the Kingdom is also presented. A small survey study to identify the implementations barriers of m-health for diabetes care in the Kingdom and the relevant solutions is also presented and discussed with future recommendations and further work in this area.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.