mDiabetes Campaign
Why diabetes?
mHealth Innovation Groups (mIGs)
Why diabetes?
Currently, more than 382 million people (8.3% of adults) worldwide have diabetes. If current trends continue, by 2030 this number will rise to 592 million – around one in ten adults – causing considerable socio-economic impact on people and governments. Because control of the disease and prevention of complications largely depend on patient self-management, mHealth solutions that support and empower the patient are a good model for how mHealth can have a major global impact.
For these reasons, the GSMA mHealth Programme launched its mDiabetes Campaign in November 2012. The purposes of the campaign are to:
- Explore how mobile health can support and transform diabetes care in established, emergent and developing health economies
- Develop case studies and examples of best practice that we can share with health economies to accelerate the implementation of mobile health solutions for diabetes
- Support our members in reaching out to governments, healthcare organisations, payers and patient associations, to encourage cooperation and partnership in diabetes solutions
- Support mobile network operators in developing and delivering trials or pilot programmes with advice regarding strategy, study design, methodology and analysis – including recommendations on scalability and implementation
mHealth Innovation Groups (mIGs)
mHealth Innovation Groups are key to the mDiabetes Campaign. These mIGs consist of GSMA members, pharmaceutical companies, healthcare practitioners, researchers, government officials, non-governmental organisations and regulatory bodies, who gather with the following objectives, specific to their region or country:
- Identify the scale of the diabetes burden
- Identify the key needs of people with diabetes and their healthcare providers
- Identify how mHealth solutions could address these needs
- Identify the barriers to adoption of mHealth solutions
- Work together to overcome the barriers
- Foster pilot programmes, trials and mainstream adoption of mHealth solutions
The first mIG was launched in Dubai in November 2012 to address the needs of the Middle East and North Africa region. Since then, mIGs have also been formed for Latin America, and most recently in the Asia Pacific region. These mIGs have succeeded in driving collaborative engagement between stakeholders, who are now working together toward the delivery of at scale, multi-stakeholder mHealth solutions. In the Middle East operators are collaborating with government in the UAE, sharing knowledge and information whilst working toward delivering national solutions. In Latin America there is on-going engagement between operators and the governments of Brazil & Colombia with proposals for new mHealth services currently under discussion.