The GSMA Mobile for Development mHealth Team has some big goals for the coming years. Since September 2013, we have been wholly focused on a nutrition initiative, by developing commercially sustainable nutrition and maternal and child mHealth services that meet public health needs, across 10 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia). At the same time and in parallel, the GSMA mAgri team is focused on nutrition and agricultural messaging in South Asia.
So, back to the big goals – in a nutshell the nutrition initiative aims to improve the health of at least 500 thousand people by 2016, rising to 1 million by 2018, by brokering partnerships and facilitating the development of mHealth nutrition advisory services, in the product areas of demand generation, registration and data surveillance.
To achieve the overall aim, the mHealth programme has set out 2 desired outcomes and 4 outputs:
Outcome 1
New knowledge and practices adopted by the users of mobile phone based health and nutrition advisory services in the 10 focus countries. The measurement will be the percentage of registered active users demonstrating changes in knowledge or behaviour in relation to nutrition practices as recommended by the Lancet June 2013, in either one or several knowledge domains:
a) Improved maternal nutrition practices during pregnancies
b) Infant and young child feeding practices
c) micro-nutrient supplementation to children at risk (i.e. Vitamin A, Zinc and ORS), disaggregated by socio-economic household profile and gender of household head
The target for 2015 is 15%.
Outcome 2
Sustainable and commercially viable business models operating at scale across the 10 focus countries that deliver health and nutrition advisory services targeting and reaching women and the poor. The measurement will be the number of sustainable and commercially viable business models for mobile health services developed at country level, with functionality for:
- Demand generation
- Registration of target populations
- Data surveillance of key maternal, newborn and child health (MNCH) and nutrition related indicators
The target for 2015 is to have documented and shared the challenges and best practices in reaching sustainability. By 2017, the target is 5 launches of mHealth services outside of the 10 countries.
Output 1
Improved access to relevant mobile phone based health and nutrition advisory services for the poor and community health workers across the 10 countries. Measurements will include the number of registered users of health related demand generation services and an increased percentage using the information, the percentage of target populations registered into the national health information system and the number of community health workers (CHWs) registered for the service submitting quality and timely data, each of these across the 10 Sub-Saharan African countries.
The targets for 2015 are 250,000 registered users, 50% of target populations registered into the national health system and 50% of registered CHWs submitting quality and timely data.
Output 2
Launch of new and scaling of existing relevant mobile phone based health and nutrition advisory services for the poor and community health workers. The measurement will be the number of potentially sustainable, interoperable business frameworks developed at a country level that include implementation plans for the following:
- Demand generation
- Registration of target populations
- Data surveillance of key MNCH nutrition related indicators
The target for 2014 is at least 1 in-country business framework developed, including an implementation plan.
Output 3
Development of high quality evidence on the cost-effectiveness and the impact of mobile phone based nutrition advisory services in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The target for 2014 is a landscape analysis of existing experience.
Output 4
Development of a per country content framework for the integration of nutrition content, which targets the poor, into the health sector and which is delivered via mobile phone technology.
The mHealth team is currently engaged on the ground in Nigeria, Malawi, Ghana and Tanzania. The remaining 6 countries will be addressed from early 2015.
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.