## 2 Background and Review  
### Interdisciplinary Research and mHealth  
Interdisciplinary research is characterized by the integration of knowledge and methods from multiple disciplines to address complex problems [10]. [PERSON] and [PERSON] [1] describe practical ways to integrate disciplinary perspectives, while [PERSON] et al. [2] show that publications integrating multiple fields earn greater impact measured by citations than single-discipline work. Large-scale studies reinforce these findings: [PERSON] et al. [6] link cross-field collaboration to many scientific advances; [PERSON] and [PERSON] [7] trace a steady rise in collaborations between neighboring disciplines; and [PERSON], [PERSON], and [PERSON] [8] report the growing dominance of team-based research, showing that collaborative efforts often yield higher-impact outputs. These patterns are directly relevant to mobile health (mHealth), which sits at the crossroads of medicine, public health, psychology, computing, and engineering.  
Mobile health is a prime example of an interdisciplinary field, combining medical expertise, technological innovation, and social science insights to develop solutions for healthcare delivery and patient management [3]. [PERSON] et al. [5] list practical design requirements--such as sustained user engagement and context-appropriate interfaces--showing that attention to these cross-disciplinary details is essential for lasting impact. [PERSON] et al. [3] extend this idea with a framework that links technical, clinical, and organizational elements into a single \"innovation ecosystem\". Looking back over the field's development, [PERSON] [4] traces mHealth's shift toward broader digital-health approaches that depend on diverse expertise.  
Work in mHealth covers a wide range of applications from remote monitoring to mental-health support and therefore demands collaboration across disciplinary boundaries [3; 4; 11; 12]. [PERSON] et al. [11] review how mobile tools already improve access to care, while [PERSON] et al. [12] outline how faster connectivity and greater computing power are changing clinical research and everyday practice. Together, these studies demonstrated a key point: successful mHealth solutions emerge when medical expertise, technological design, and social science perspectives work together.  
While integrating interdisciplinary views offers significant advantages, such as fostering innovation and generating novel insights, it also presents challenges, including communication barriers and the need for specialized training [13; 14]. To mitigate these barriers, structured training programs, such as the mHTI [15], play a critical role in fostering interdisciplinary collaboration by providing researchers with the skills and networks needed to navigate cross-disciplinary challenges [9]. These programs not only facilitate knowledge exchange but also help build the research trajectories of participating scholars, encouraging them to explore new methodologies and perspectives. However, the long-term impact of such programs on scholars' research interests and productivity remains underexplored, highlighting a gap in the literature that this study seeks to address.