Developing an mHealth Application to Empower Community Health Service for Married Couple: Challenges and Opportunities

mHealth (mobile health) utilizes mobile phones and other wireless technology in medical care which has the potential to improve healthcare system for better and quality life. Even though mHealth got more attention but its adoption are still limited due to lack of awareness and wide level of education in developing countries. With the advancement of technology people are very concerned about the life and life style. After the marriage, couples hope for a wonderful life ahead. However there are lots of concerns which arise in their mind regarding the conjugal life as well as issues related to before, during and after pregnancy. The aim of this paper is to analyze the potential to support them utilizing mHealth. Accordingly we explored research articles, papers and available mobile applications based on the problems a married couple faced during their life stages. We also performed a survey in a large hospital to identify the problems that faced by pregnant women and their family. From our investigation we identified stages required for mhealth adoption for married couples. Consequently it created the opportunities to develop a smart application that can help to address the need. In particular, the app can able to provide the planning of a couple for the contraceptives or to conceive, pregnancy planning and tracking with guideline needed for a pregnant woman along with the role of both husband and wife to help out and finally everything after the birth of the baby. These are the major concerns of our application which can serve as a complete guideline for a couple to overcome the challenges regarding giving birth and growing up a healthy baby.