Morning Briefing

The use of mobile phones for medical purposes, or mHealth, holds "promising implications," but "there are still some challenges to overcome," PBS NewsHour reports. Additional research is necessary to determine whether people act on health-related text messages and whether the messages have value for a user, to "questions ... around whether applications can be used across all mobile devices, and how to charge cell phones in areas where electricity is spotty or nonexistent," the news service writes. "Despite all of the challenges, there is progress, especially in the area of collecting health information," NewsHour notes (Epatko, 10/5).