Leveraging mHealth Technologies for Public Health

Traditional public health surveillance efforts are generally based on self-reported data. Although well validated, these methods may nevertheless be subjected to limitations such as biases, delays, and costs or logistical challenges. An alternative is the use of smart technologies (eg, smartphones and smartwatches) to complement self-report indicators. Having embedded sensors that provide zero-effort, passive, and continuous monitoring of health variables, these devices generate data that could be leveraged for cases in which the data are related to the same self-report metric of interest.