eHealth and mHealth

This paper presents the results of a qualitative study to investigate the perceptions and experiences of health workers involved in a a cluster-randomized controlled trial of a novel intervention to improve health worker malaria case management in 107 government health facilities in Kenya. The intervention involved sending text-messages about paediatric outpatient malaria case-management accompanied by motivating quotes to health workers’ mobile phones. [from abstract]

In rural India, frontline health workers—called accredited social health activists (or ASHAs)—are improving the health of women and families in their own communities by offering key preventive health services. Through the Manthan Project, IntraHealth International is testing a promising multi-media mobile phone application called mSakhi as a tool to make ASHAs’ jobs both easier and more effective. [from author]

The objectives of this review were to highlight gaps in knowledge of the benefits of e-health and identify areas of potentially useful future research on e-health. The evidence collected focuses on the impact of e-health on systems facilitating clinical practice, institutional systems, and systems facilitating care at a distance. [adapted from author]

By analysing health programmes in low- and middle-income countries that engage the private sector, this paper fills gaps in the e-health literature and provides new insight into several central questions. It examines the geographic distribution of technology-enabled programmes, the key issues technology can address in the health sector, and the key challenges posed by the adoption and implementation of technology for health-related purposes. [from author]

This 8 minute video highlights one solution to the problem of doctor absenteeism being deployed in the Karnataka region in southern India. When patients arrive at a primary health clinic and the doctor is absent, they can use their phones to text a central location which will record this data to allow the government to track and citizens to see which clinics are chronically understaffed. [from publisher]

This article presents the finding of a study to assess the feasibility, acceptabilty and effectiveness of short online courses for mental health professionals and service users. [adapted from author]

This study sought to understand what the field of mHealth had to offer, to explore how mHealth is implemented in practice and to use these two sources of information to reflect on the lessons and implications for implementing mHealth at scale for monitoring and evaluation of community based services and community health workers. [adapted from summary]

This overview outlines how the growing trend in online learning can open up new perspectives and opportunities for Africa’s health professionals. [adapted from author]

This study aimed to assess whether the use of cell phone text messaging to improve access to continuing healthcare education in under-resourced settings is acceptable to South African midwives in both the public and private sectors. [adapted from author]

To assist in generating further discussion and actions to improve the interoperability of eHealth solutions, the World Bank commissioned this concept paper outlining relevant issues and options on the harmonization and alignment of the eHealth architecture for human resources for health management and development. [adapted from author]

This presentation from the Family Planning Conference in Dakar discusses mobile’s unprecedented reach and its role in providing new family planning channels and partners for donors, quality improvement and collaboration among family planning projects. [adapted from author]

This report details an eLearning intervention for nurses in Kenya to improve the standards of nursing care by equipping enrolled nurses with the skills to manage new and re-emerging diseases, address the shortage of qualified nurses in Kenya, improve quality of care and achieve health-related Millennium Development Goals. [adapted from author]

The growing penetration of mobile phone networks in many low- and middle-income countries is transforming the way health services and information are accessed, delivered and managed. This document provides an overview of mHealth initiatives, an analysis of the results of the different types of intitiatives, barriers to implementation and an evaluation based on WHO surveys. [from author]

This study assessed whether text-message reminders sent to health workers’ mobile phones could improve and maintain their adherence to treatment guidelines for outpatient paediatric malaria in Kenya. [from summary]

This presentation outlines an intervention that introduced PDAs or Smartphones for data collection in Nigeria to improve the supervision, assessment and creation of action plans for quality improvement in facilities where tuberculosis (TB) is diagnosed and treated. [adapted from author]

This article outlines a mobile health information pilot project in South Africa that provides nurses with instant access to a clinical library and treatment guidelines to improve their performance and positively impact patient care. [adapted from author]

This report explores the use of mobile devices in the collection and transfer of critical health data at the local, national and international levels. The paper is structured around three core healthcare domains: surveillance systems, supply chain, and human resources. Experts in these domains identify critical gaps in health information flows and offer recommendations on how technology-based solutions can be applied. [from publisher]