The Mobile for Development mHealth Team is busy and growing, since we announced last October the commencement of a 3-year 10-country (Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia) initiative, which runs in parallel to a more mature project in South Africa. This 10-country implementation will lead to three very tangible outputs in Maternal, Child and Newborn Health (MNCH):
- The development of commercially sustainable business cases between mobile and health
- The launch of mHealth services that demonstrate value for mobile health stakeholders
- The replication of mHealth services that ensure integration into national health systems
Now, five months into this process, the time is right for a first progress report.
Country Feasibility and Product Concepts
Work commenced in Nigeria and Malawi in line with the overall project launch and significant progress has already been made. Country landscaping, including a full inventory of services and related initiatives, is almost complete. In addition, a number of workshops and engagement meetings have been carried out in-country, bringing together public and private sectors in both the health and mobile industries. Support from all stakeholders had been uniformly strong.
Right now, the focus is on the publication of the Country Feasibility Reports, due in April. These reports will provide context and justification for a number of high potential Product Concepts, all of which will subsequently be validated using in-country consumer research.
More than 25 mHealth services in both Nigeria and Malawi have been profiled within the GSMA mHealth Tracker, by gathering information on target audience, use case, business models and success metrics. 10 of these services will be selected for more in-depth Service Maturity Assessment, to investigate potential for scale and commercialization and opportunities for partnerships with other services.
Government Engagement
In Nigeria, the deployment and research team attended the ICT for Saving One Million Lives (ICT4SOML) launch in Abuja organized by the mHealth Alliance in November 2013, which brought together a number of public and private sector players active in mHealth, including BBC Media Action, MAMA, Intel, Futures Group and others. In January 2014 an additional stakeholder engagement session was organized by the GSMA at the SOML Offices in Abuja, to share specific learning on deployments from service providers from both the private sector and the NGO sector.
In Malawi, engagement has been initiated with Mr. Chris Moyo, Technical Advisor to the Minister of Health in matters of mHealth, who has given his full support to the GSMA’s programme of work and who is committed to organizing a follow up workshop of key stakeholders within the Malawian government. This will include the Directors of the respective Reproductive Health and Nutrition departments, as well as Heads of the e-Government and e-Health Departments.
Mobile Operators
Our mobile operator members in both Nigeria and Malawi have welcomed the initiative and committed their support to work with the health sector in the launch of mHealth services. As is logical, mobile operators have suggested a start-point focus on commercial mHealth services that have existing relationships with operators, which can then be developed to incorporate a public sector mHealth model.
Partnerships and Collaborations
In both countries, we have carried out initial engagement with private sector coalitions that have made commitments to mHealth (the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) Health Alliance in Nigeria, and the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) network in Malawi), exploring opportunities for other private sector players (outside of mobile) to participate in the development and growth of mHealth.
The GSMA provided continued input in the development of the Every Newborn Action Plan in New York, USA in December 2013. An important link was made to women and children as the target market, ensuring that nutrition and 13 essential commodities are included in the strategy and that mobile and ICT are prioritised by all development partners to drive demand for services.
There is continued board representation of private sector by the GSMA on the WHO’s Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (PMNCH). The GSMA was elected onto the Executive Committee as well as a planning committee for a Partners Forum to be held in June/July 2014 in Johannesburg, South Africa. The Partners Forum will present a unique opportunity to leverage work in Nigeria and Malawi across all development partners in those markets.
For more information on the GSMA Mobile for Development mHealth, please contact us on mhealth@gsma.com. For information on various mHealth initiatives, click here. For more information on GSMA mHealth resources, click here