During MWC15 the GSMA mHealth team held the inaugural M4D mHealth Workshop. This event was convened to bring key GSMA stakeholders in the mHealth ecosystem together, to cement partnering opportunities and develop strategies to enable these partnerships moving forward.

Momentum has been building behind mHealth initiatives motivated by the GSMA through its mNutrition initiative, targeting 10 countries in SSA, and the workshop considered the tangible benefits and sought to structure the process for the next stage of development.

Feedback from the workshop members was dynamic and insightful. One of the key topics that was unpacked was the value of first mover advantage and exclusivity from the perspective of the partner operator. Generally this feature was important to all of the MNO workshop members, but the degree of importance was dependent on specific markets, no doubt tied to the dynamics of market share.

While desire for exclusivity from MNO partners is repeatedly experienced by content and service providers, it is not always compatible with their requirements. Invariably, multiple partners leveraging the content is the preferred strategy as it is the most likely to demonstrate impact.  One strategy to tackle this is to define the exclusivity period, limiting to a set period that allows exclusivity but does not sanction indefinitely.  This position was considered but arguably misses the opportunity of mass partnering relations and the aggregate impact this type of approach can have.

Multiple partner approach to mHealth

Clustering is a feature of Central Place Theory, which in simple terms is the counterintuitive fact that when services are clustered together the aggregate sales opportunity is increased exponentially, despite the seeming increase in competitive features. This feature is widely witnessed in the retail and fast-food sector and is particularly surprising when the fast food is in all sense the same, for example a food type (hamburgers) or cuisine from a particular country (Chinese).

A particular feature of this theory is clustering to make business more efficient. An example of this is allowing potential competitors to leverage mass broadcast (aggregated marketing of the mHealth message) and communicate lessons learned (innovation can be quickly disseminated). These efficiency gains are particularly valuable when differentiation is difficult as is the case with early stage mHealth services, such as stage-based MNCH messaging, where differentiation is difficult due to the generic message content.

The GSMA will continue to convene on behalf of the mHealth ecosystem partners to ensure mobile reaches its full potential in servicing end-users commercially, ethically and from a health burden impact perspective.

The importance of partnerships in mHealth

We have recently published a report entitled The Importance of Partnerships in mHealth, which highlights some of the best practices and evidence regarding partnerships within mHealth services. The report presents the findings of a survey across 276 mHealth services in the 10 countries included in the mobile nutrition (mNutrition) initiative.

For more information on GSMA Mobile for Development mHealth, please see here or contact us on [email protected]. For information on global mHealth initiatives, click here.