Smartphone as a sensor in mHealth: Narrative overview, SWOT analysis, and proposal of mobile biomarkers

Abstract

Digital applications for supporting health management often fail to achieve large-scale adoption. Costs related to purchasing, maintaining, and using medical or sensor devices, such as smartwatches, currently hinder uptake and sustained engagement, particularly in the prevention and monitoring of lifelong conditions. As an alternative, smartphone-based passive monitoring could provide a viable strategy for lifelong use, removing hardware-related costs and exploiting the synergies between mobile health (mHealth) and ambient assisted living (AAL). However, smartphone sensor toolkits are not designed for diagnostic purposes, and their quality varies depending on the model, maker, and generation. This narrative overview of recent reviews (narrative meta-review) on the current state of smartphone-based passive monitoring highlights the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT analysis) of this approach, which pervasively encompasses digital health, mHealth, and AAL. The results are then consolidated into a newly defined concept of a mobile biomarker, that is, a general model of medical indices for diagnostic tasks that can be computed using smartphone sensors and capabilities.