Cellphones, social media and other technologies hold the potential to root out corruption and improve accountability for healthcare in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), according to a new study.
Projects underway include allowing people to use social media to report discrimination or bribery and use of mobile devices to scan bar codes to determine whether medicines are counterfeit. Yet there’s scant research on all the ways in which technology might be used effectively, according to the study, published in The Journal of Global Health.
Researchers in the United Kingdom performed a literature review, settling on 34 articles from which they identified 15 ways communications technology could be used to improve healthcare governance. These they clustered into four categories:
- Gathering and verifying information from frontline workers or the public about services
- Aggregating and visualizing data, such as mapping independent reports
- Mobilizing citizens to report poor practices by text, social media or interactive websites
- Automating and auditing processes such as payroll to prevent fraud
For instance, the Gates Foundation-backed Performance Monitoring and Accountability 2020 project uses an app to survey the public about family planning and sanitation services in LMICs, which could provide external accountability not possible from self-reporting by government healthcare providers, the authors note.
The Quipu Project in Peru uses mobile phones, radio and interactive documentary to collect testimonies from the indigenous people affected by a government forced sterilization project from the 1990s.
The authors stress that the ultimate goal should not just be improved transparency, but use of the information to take action.
“It should not be assumed that digital technologies or eGovernment platforms will deliver good governance-related benefits unless they explicitly address specific and measurable concerns with performance or facilitate concrete mechanisms of responsive governance,” they authors write.