This is a guest blog by Dr. Peter Benjamin, Director of the mHealth Expert Learning Program (mHELP). This is part 1 of a 2-part blog. Part 2 is available here.
The 21st of August was a big day for mHealth in South Africa!
The first national public mHealth service has been launched by the Department of Health, by the Minister of Health Dr Aaron Motsoaledi at KT Motubatse Clinic in Shoshaguve, Tshwane.
MomConnect has three main objectives:
1. Register each pregnancy at a government health facility
2. Send stage-based, personalised SMSs to each mom in the registry
3. Allow women to engage with the health system through help desk tools and services
How it works, if you are an expectant mom:
1. Ask a nurse to confirm you are pregnant
2. Dial *134*550# from your cell phone to register
3. Answer a few simple questions about your pregnancy
4. You will then be registered – welcome to the family!
The system can also be activated by a Community Health Worker, or a woman can subscribe herself directly to a more limited service without a health worker.
I think huge credit should be given to the Health Minister for championing this initiative; Dr Yogan Pillay who led the project; Dr Peter Barron for tirelessly driving the very challenging process over more than a year; Antonio Fernandes the Project Manager; Marcha Bekker, Debbie Rogers and the team at the Praekelt Foundation for staggering amounts of work to get it working; Rob Allen for trouble shooting so that all the tech bits fit together; Chris Seebregts and his team at Jembi for calmly and persistently seeing the bigger picture of how the health information should be designed; Craig Friderichs & Mojca Cargo for bringing the mobile operators on board; Prof Dave Woods for continually reminding us that this is about women & nurses and not cell phones & servers; Dr Lesley Bamford and her team for getting all the messages right; Sue Goldstein and the team at Soul City for knowing how to communicate better than the techies; Amy Gottlieb, Anne Magege, Alice Lin Fabiano and Siobhan Crowley for finding the money; Maruis Conradie, Nicolene van Zyl, Phindile Dyani and Niven Anghar from the mobile operators; Justin Yarrow, Matthew Chetty, Jesse Coleman (and apologies to the many others who have contributed that I haven’t mentioned).
A huge thanks also goes to the donors who made this happen: the US government’s OGAC program, Johnson & Johnson, ELMA Philanthropies and UK aid from the Department for International Development (DFID) managed through Mott MacDonald.
The target is to subscribe and register 1 million women in the system over two years. This is an ambitious aim – in South Africa there are approximately 1.2 million births each year (1million in the public sector and 200,000 in the private sector).
For a good description of the service:
www.westerncape.gov.za/general-publication/new-project-connects-expectant-moms-government-health-services
For pictures and to see updates from the launch:
storify.com/JNJGlobalHealth/momconnect-launch?sf30086329=1
For a research angle that is supportive and asks relevant challenging questions (around unintended pregnancies, negative feedback and privacy issues):
http://knotsids.blogspot.com/2014/08/opportunities-and-challenges-for-worlds.html