In technology-saturated cultures like the United States and Europe, it’s tempting to take mHealth as just one more technological step forward. But in less-developed parts of the world like Africa, mHealth can dramatically improve the effectiveness of delivering care.
Among those seeing that firsthand is Hilde Eugelink, a partnership broker with IICD, an international non-profit organization using information and communications technologies (ICT) to improve living conditions in developing parts of the world.
On Monday, December 9, at the HIMSS Media mHealth Summit at the gaylord National Resort and Convention Center just outside of Washington D.C., Eugelink will talk about her work with Orange, the international mobile operator, in a project called "Ma Sante" in Mali and Senegal.
“Malaria is one of the main causes of death in both Mali and Senegal,” she said, noting that pregnant women and children bless than five years of age are particularly vulnerable. In response, IICD co-piloted a project with a local organization, Muso Ladamunen, in which local community health workers were trained to use mobile phones with an app called MAMMAN to collect data on malaria indicators among (pregnant) women and children during regular house calls.
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That data is sent by SMS to a nearby health facility, where doctors can immediately see who needs treatment in a hospital. Eugelink said the results, to put it mildly, have been striking.
In the first six months of the project, she said, 15 percent more children ages 5 and younger received treatment within 24 hours. The response time to a case of malaria was reduced by 65 percent, she said, workers were able to make 20 percent more house calls, and doctors were able to more easily detect and respond to outbreaks of malaria thanks to large-scale data collection and regular updates.
Orange came on board in late 2012 to help IICD ramp up the project in Mali (where outreach is growing from 50,000 to 200,000 people) and replicate it in Senegal (with a projected outreach of 100,000 people). The company is also involved in making the app more technically robust, so that it can run on different platforms, and be more easily rolled out in other countries.
As Eugelink sees it, the partnership with Orange brings advantages in addition to technical expertise.
“It becomes easier to get access to other potentially interesting public and private partners,” she said, and “they also help with developing a solid business case around the use of the mobile apps.”
For example, efforts are underway to link mobile-based malaria intervention with micro health insurance for malaria, with the goal of ensuring that the intervention itself becomes financially sustainable, thus ensuring the spread of the program to other countries.
On that note, Eugelink said program partners are pushing forward aggressively. Using funds from the Innovation Working Group (which includes, among others, the World Health Organization) and the mHealth Alliance, they are halfway though their plan of upscaling the program in Mali and replicating it in Senegal. Meanwhile, also in Senegal, they’re integrating the MAMMAN app into an existing app to measure child health indicators.
To register for the conference, visit the mHealth Summit website.
