MobileActive.org

Both mHealth and MFS (Mobile Financial Services) are nascent industries and fragmented along multiple dimensions. The aim of this paper is to help reduce some of these uncertainties and reinforce dialogue on how the mobile communications platform can be leveraged to strengthen mutually positive outcomes related to both financial inclusion and health. With user-centric solutions that leverage common technologies, new efficiencies and capabilities can be created that serve to accelerate global scale.

Unlocking this potential will require the following questions to be addressed: 1. What will be the best method to drive awareness and adoption of the self-reinforcing dynamics of “wealth and health”? Who will lead these efforts? 2. How will the integration and interoperability of disparate technologies across multiple industry and public sector domains occur? 3. Who will build and manage the common infrastructure and distribution networks? 4. How will the various points of policy coordination work across sector domains?

In the context of the rapid growth of mobile phone penetration in developing countries, mobile telephony is currently considered to be particularly important for development. Yet, until recently, very little systematic evidence was available that shed light on the developmental impacts of mobile telecommunication. The Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D) program of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Canada, has played a critical role in filling some of the research gaps through its partnerships with several key actors in this area.

The objective of this paper is to evaluate the case of mobile phones as a tool in solving development problems drawing from the evidence of IDRC supported projects. IDRC has supported around 20 projects that cut across several themes such as livelihoods, poverty reduction, health, education, the environment and disasters. The projects will be analyzed by theme in order to provide a thematic overview as well as a comparative analysis of the development role of mobile phones. In exploring the evidence from completed projects as well as the foci of new projects, the paper summarizes and critically assesses the key findings and suggests possible avenues for future research.

Problem Quick detection and response were essential for preventing outbreaks of infectious diseases after the Sichuan earthquake. However, the existing public health communication system in Sichuan province, China, was severely damaged by the earthquake.

Approach The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention set up a mobile phone emergency reporting system. In total, 495 light-powered mobile phones were delivered to local health-care agencies in earthquake affected areas. All phones were loaded with software designed for inputting and transmitting cases of infectious disease directly to a national database for further analysis.

Local setting The emergency reporting system was set up in 14 counties hit hardest by the earthquake in Sichuan province, China.

Relevant changes One week after delivering mobile phones to earthquake-affected areas, the number of health-care agencies at the township level that had filed reports returned to the normal level. The number of cases reported by using mobile phones accounted for as much as 52.9% of the total cases reported weekly from 19 May to 13 July in those areas.

Lessons learned The mobile phone is a useful communication tool for infectious disease surveillance in areas hit by natural disasters. Nevertheless, plans must be made ahead of time and be included in emergency preparedness programmes.

This White Paper, written by a team of researchers at the Center for Global Health and Economic Development at the Earth Institute, Columbia University, examines and synthesizes the existing mHealth literature to assess the current state of mHealth knowledge, evaluate the impact of mHealth implementations in LMICs and to examine programming, policy and research-related barriers to and gaps in mHealth scale and sustainability.

The paper is divided into two main sections. The first section reviews and summarizes the peer-reviewed literature on mHealth initiatives (focus on LMICS) to highlight trends and challenges. The second section examines the existing mHealth policy environment, barriers and gaps, and key drivers needed for an enabling policy environment.

The major thematic areas include:

• Treatment Compliance
• Data Collection and Disease Surveillance
• Health Information Systems and Point of Care Support
• Health Promotion and Disease Prevention
• Emergency Medical Response

The review identified significant gaps in mHealth knowledge stemming from the limited scale and scope of mHealth implementation and evaluation, a policy environment that does not link health objectives and related metrics to available mHealth tools and systems, and little investment in cost-benefit studies to assess mHealth value and health outcomes research to assess success factors and weed out poor investments.

The ability to collect data is key to the success of many organizations operating in the developing world. Given the weaknesses of current tools and the surge in mobile phone growth, there's an opportunity for mobile and cloud technologies to enable timely and efficient data collection. This paper discusses Open Data Kit (ODK), a suite of tools that enable efficient and timely data collection on cell phones. ODK is designed to let users own, visualize, and share data without the difficulties of setting up and maintaining servers. The tools are easy to use, deploy, and scale. They also go beyond open source - they're based on open standards and supported by a larger community.

Epi Data and Epi Info are often used together by public health agencies around the world, particularly in developing countries, to meet their needs of low-cost public health data management; however, the current open source data management technology lacks a mobile component to meet the needs of mobile public health data collectors. The goal of this project is to explore the opportunity of filling this gap through developing and trial of a personal digital assistant (PDA) based data collection/entry system. It evaluated whether such a system could increase efficiency and reduce data transcription errors for public surveillance data collection in developing countries represented by Fiji.

120 participants were recruited from the Fiji School of Medicine were randomly assigned to be interviewed by one of six interviewers in one of the two ways: (1) paper-based survey followed by PDA survey and (2) PDA survey followed by paper-based survey. Data quality was measured by error rates (logical range errors/inconsistencies, skip errors, missing values, date or time field errors and incorrect data type). Work flow and cost were evaluated in three stages of the survey process: (1) preparation of data collection instrument, (2) data collection and (3) data entry, validation and cleaning. User acceptance was also evaluated in the two groups of participants: (1) data collectors and (2) survey participants.

None of the errors presented in 20.8% of the paper questionnaires was found in the data set collected using PDA. Sixty-two percent of the participants perceived that the PDA-based questionnaire took less time to complete. Data entry, validation and cleaning for the PDA-based data collection from 120 participants took a total of 1.5 h, a 93.26% reduction of time from 20.5h required using paper and pen. The cost is also significantly reduced with PDA-based protocol. Both data collectors and participants prefer to use PDA instead of paper for data collection. The trial results prove that eSTEPS is a feasible solution for public health surveillance data collection in the field. Several deficiencies of the softwarewere also identified and would be addressed in the next version.

eSTEPS offers the potential to meet the need for an effective mobile public health data collection tool for use in the field. The eSTEPS field trial proves that PDA was more efficient than paper for public health survey data collection. It also significantly reduced errors in data entry. The later benefit was derived from the software providing its users with the flexibility of building their own constraints to control the data type, range and logic of data entry.

Over four and a half billion people live in the developing world and require access to services in the financial, agricultural, business, government and healthcare sectors. Due to constraints of the existing infrastructure (power, communications, etc), it is often difficult to deliver these services to remote areas in a timely and efficient manner.

The CAM framework has found success as a flexible platform for quickly developing and deploying high-impact applications for these environments. Many of the applications built with CAM have relied on a model where a field worker with a mobile phone regularly returns from a disconnected environment to one with connectivity. In this connected state, the phone and a centralized server can exchange information and get the collected data backed up on reliable media.

We propose extending CAM’s networking model to enable continual operation in disconnected environments. Using a set of heterogeneous paths made available through social and geographic relationships naturally present among workers, we describe a system for asynchronously routing data in a best-effort manner.

The overall goal of the PDAs for Malaria Monitoring in Maputo and Gaza Provinces, Centre was to improve the management of public health dat using handheld computers in order to provide the malaria program the Lubombo Spatial Development Initiative (LSDI) with appropriate assessment tools and the ability to make informed decisions.

The specific objectives of the project that would contribute to the achievement of the overall goal were

1. to enable personnel from District level of the health service to collect data and provide it to the Provincial level in a timely fashion;
2. to develop training courses and appropriate collection tools designed for use with handheld computers; and
3. to evaluate the utility of handheld computers for the malaria control program to provide data rapidly and accurately to allow better targeting of interventions and resources.

AED-SATELLIFE developed and successfully deployed electronic data collection tools which catalog drug and rapid diagnostic test stocks; spray operators daily work performance; weekly health facility data; localization of individual households with GPS, including demographic data on household members, house structure and divisions; and health facility surveys linked to GPS positioning. Training materials were developed inPortuguese.

Independent evaluation confirmed that the electronic data collection/transmission tools proved to be a useful, adoptable, and result in higher user satisfaction compared to paper based approaches. Some challenges need to be addressed before there can be widespread adoption of the technology, such as limited infrastructure, especially cellular coverage.

The  usage  of  mobile  phones  is  abundant  in  our  daily  lives  in  various  aspects from making phone calls or sending text messages to checking e-mails or news updates to planning our activities or managing our budget. This project aims at making use of this wide spread usage of mobiles to help in the  data  collection  process.  It  designs  and  develops  a  web  based  system  called “MobiCollect”  that  is  used  for  creating  forms  or  questionnaires  to  be  later accessed  by  the  data  collectors  using  their  mobile  phone  web  browser  in  order fill in the form with the appropriate data. 
 
Once  the  system  design  and  implementation  is  completed  it  will be  tested  and evaluated to ensure the satisfaction of at least the minimum requirements of the proposed system.

This paper provides an overview of the implications of this trend for the delivery of healthcare services and population health. In addition to addressing how mobile phones are changing the way health professionals communicate with their patients, a summary is provided of current and projected technologic capabilities of mobile phones that have the potential to render them an increasingly indispensable personal health device. Finally, the health risks of mobile phone use are addressed, as are several unresolved technical and policy-related issues unique to mobile phones. Because these issues may influence how well and how quickly mobile phones are integrated into health care, and how well they serve the needs of the entire population, they deserve the attention of both the healthcare and public health community.

The Swedish International Development and Cooperation Agency (Sida) recently published a report that gives an overview of the current state of mobile phone applications for social and economic developments in East Africa. Drawing on successful adoption of mobile applications in the Philippines, this Sida report seeks to answer “what hinders the take off of m-applications for development in East Africa and what role donors play in the process.” While mobile phones is the one of the most widely accessible gateways for information in East Africa, with mobile penetration covering over 40% of the population, sustainable, scalable mobile services for social and economic development are limited. The report is supported by secondary data, statistics, and field work carried out in Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania, along with numerous interviews, meetings and discussions with key stakeholders in East Africa. Major trends in mobile usage, barriers for increased use of m-applications, as well as opportunities for scaling are discussed.

A how-to guide on using and implementing RapidSMS for mobile data collection and communication.