As of January 2013, GSMA mHealth is tracking 326 mHealth services in Africa (up from 135 in December 2011). Sixty-three of these are listed in the South African market, the greatest number of mHealth services in an African country that we’ve tracked. . Initiatives are addressing various issues and needs, however the most addressed mHealth categories are health systems and health workers. The most addressed medical need is HIV/AIDS [1]. This data is not very surprising for the country, given the fact that South Africa has one of the lowest physician densities and has 5.6 million people living with HIV/AIDS and 380,000 new infections per year.

Similar to other countries, even South Africa is fighting the Pilotitis problem. Most of the services are small and focusing only on certain districts. Not many services are commercial and most are still trying to build a better understanding of a sustainable commercial business model. As of January 2013, 41 services were funded by donors and 7 by the government [2]. None of the services that are listed are funded by an advertising model and rare are the examples where organisations developed successful customers’ or business’ revenue generation business models.

The GSMA mHealth team is conducting research to obtain in-depth understanding of the commercial and technical landscape of the mobile industry in South Africa. An important part of this research is the update and verification of existing entries in the mHealth Tracker to provide a better overview of the current state of mHealth services in South Africa.

With this in mind, we would like to kindly ask you to have a look and let us know if any updates are required if your product or service is already listed. If you are not yet included in the mHealth Tracker, please let us know so we can add you to the Tracker and ensure you are included as part of our Country Feasibility Report.

Please send updates and additions to [email protected]. Thank you for your help!