The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has put together a second volume of mHealth compendium produced by the African Strategies for Health Project in June 2013 but just released. The compendium contains 27 case studies which document a range of mHealth applications being implemented mainly throughout Africa, but also in other regions of the world.
"In order to help USAID missions access relevant mHealth information, this compendium offers project descriptions, publication references and contact information for making further inquiries," states the executive summary. "Each two-page case study includes an introduction to the health area or problem; a description of the mHealth intervention highlighted; a description of any important results or evaluation findings; lessons learned; and conclusion. In addition, the second page includes a summary of the geographic coverage, implementation partners, and donors, as well as contact information for the implementing partner and donor."
The mHealth case studies in the compendium are organized within five programmatic areas: behavior change communication, data collection, finance, logistics, and service delivery.
"The authors envision that a compendium like this one is particularly needed with regard to mHealth where there is a plethora of activities being funded at the country level," states the report. "In order to help USAID missions access relevant mHealth information, this compendium describes some of the major mHealth applications being utilized in Africa and elsewhere in the world…While this two-page document does not offer an exhaustive description of all aspects of each application, it does offer enough information for those interested in learning further about innovative mHealth applications in the region."
A recent article in the Online Journal of Nursing Informatics uses three case studies from around the world to demonstrate the potentials of mHealth to fulfill applications in community health, epidemiology, and acute care evidence-based practice, as well as building awareness, capturing data on a near/real time basis, and remotely monitoring chronic health conditions. The article examines the Mobile Technology for Community Health (MOTECH) initiative in Ghana for building awareness of critical maternal client information, the EpiSurveyor project globally for capturing real time data, and Enhancing Nurses Access for Care Quality and Knowledge through Technology (ENACQKT) in the Caribbean for remote monitoring.
To learn more:
- read the USAID compendium