In one of the recent blogs we briefly presented our Pan-African mHealth Initiative (PAMI). Today we would like to share with you the PAMI background and the key findings on current mHealth services that we recently concluded in South Africa.

Background

The business case development phase of the Pan-African mHealth Initiative in South Africa began on 1 April 2013 – to support the launch of a suite of interoperable mHealth services addressing maternal, newborn and child health across South Africa.  This phase aims to deliver the following:

• Industry Research – on reach and scope of existing mHealth services in South Africa
• Public Sector Engagement to determine specific aims and opportunities for collaboration
• Development of a National Product Concept to leverage as many of the lessons learnt in mHealth from existing deployments
• Development of a Testing Framework to assess the technical and commercial viability of interoperable collaboration(s)
• Commissioning of Primary Research to address specific technical, commercial and/or regulatory barriers that need to be addressed prior to scaling of interoperable mHealth services
• Development of a National Business Case projecting scenarios of health-economic impact for specified mHealth services to reach national scale

We wrapped up the Industry Research portion of the initiative this month. We’ll be sharing the full results of this research soon, but I wanted to share with you some of the high-level findings below. Additionally, we’ve started to work on the other elements of this phase, and will have a progress update in the next few months.

Industry Research: Key findings on current mHealth services in South Africa

We conducted both quantitative and qualitative research on the existing mHealth services in South Africa, and took note of the opportunities and challenges expressed by different stakeholders in the mHealth ecosystem in the country.

mHealth, as in other emerging markets, is one of the most active mobile verticals in South Africa. Unfortunately, it also lacks the sustainable impact data that drives strategic integration into health systems. Fragmentation and an inability to monetize or create sustainable financing structures through public-private partnerships are just two of the hurdles faced by industry stakeholders.

In our research we identified 101 mHealth products and services in South Africa, out of which 83 are currently active. Of these active products & services, the most addressed medical need is HIV/AIDS, with a total of 42 services and second to that was TB, with a total of 10. Diabetes, malaria and diarrhoeal disease are some of the other medical needs that were addressed, but in a lesser extent.

Interestingly even though roughly 4 million people – or almost 10% of the population – are living with diabetes in South Africa, only 3 services address this medical need.

Given the fact that maternal, newborn and child health (MNCH) is our primary area of focus, we gave additional importance to these services. We came across 18 mHealth products and services that are targeting MNCH out of which 12 services were improving prevention, participation and promotion through various messaging channels.

Vital health information to new and expectant mothers is delivered through various similar services: BabyInfo, MAMA, Hi4Life, MomConnect and The Baby Club; reaching approximately 800K mothers and expectant mothers through different services and channels. BabyInfo alone is reaching 760K through the MXit channel. Variety of similar services suggest that more coordinated role is needed.

Additional mHealth services targeting MNCH are focusing on empowering community health workers and midwives and strengthening the health systems through education, providing tools for easier data collection, decision support, planning, and human resource management.

A presentation will be shared in the upcoming weeks, presenting in-depth explanation of the following key findings:

• There exists a fragmented, nascent mHealth industry with many small services addressing same areas: Extensive similarities in the functionality and use cases of mHealth services deployed
• Of the existing products and services, the majority are small-scale pilots with unsustainable business models that are donor-led.
• Scale is a moving target, with handful of services showing promising adoption
• There is a disproportionate distribution of services throughout the country
• Organisations with mHealth products and services have an insufficient level of engagement with South Africa’s regulators.
• Differing levels of success in deployments appears to stem from differences in a deployment’s engagement strategy in the field as well as relationships with provincial and district health authorities.

We would like to invite you to have a look at the mHealth tracker where you will be able to have a look at the mHealth products and services in South Africa as also throughout the world. We would also like to encourage you to let us know any comments/suggestions/ideas that you might have about the mHealth products and services as also about the mHealth state of the industry in South Africa.