mHealth to the Rescue: Growing use of wireless and mobile technologies improves community health, even in rural areas

In rural areas, it is not unusual for patients to travel 50 miles or more to reach their doctors? offices or for doctors to refer patients to specialists whose offices are 80, 100, even 200-plus miles away. The sheer distance is a major obstacle for patients of all kinds: those who need urgent specialist care, those who have a chronic condition that requires regular visits, those who live in areas prone to poor weather-related driving conditions-really, anyone who has better things to do than spend hours traveling to and from a medical appointment.