What is new in mHealth in South Africa? Through the mHealth Task Team, we are supporting the South African National Department of Health (NDoH) to create an interoperable mobile Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (mMNCH) solution, that will address the needs of Millennium Development Goals 4, 5 and 6.
Maternal, perinatal and under-5 mortality in South Africa remains unacceptably high. It is estimated that 40% of all deaths are avoidable. The South African NDOH has set ambitious targets as it aims to significantly reduce this morbidity and mortality burden.
As many of you know by now there are several mobile health (mHealth) projects in South Africa that focus on registration at health facilities, pre-registration (or so called identification) by Community Health Workers (CHWs) and subscription to targeted dissemination of behaviour change messaging that reinforces early antenatal visits and healthy behaviour during the 1000 days of life period.
Regardless of all the conversation, there are still a number of barriers that need to be overcome to successfully integrate mHealth into the health system:
- Fragmentation of services amongst multiple service providers;
- The inability to grow projects beyond the pilot phase and achieve sustainable economies of scale; and
- The lack of technical, clinical and inter-organisational interoperability.
Under the leadership of Dr Yogan Pillay, a Task Team consisting of national and international experts was convened to develop a proposal to enable one million maternal registrations and behaviour change in the public health sector using interoperable mobile health services
It is hoped that by demonstrating this maternal use case (subscription, identification and registration) across multiple providers, partners will be able to achieve economies of scale, reduce operating costs (SMS, training, promotion) and demonstrate a significant health economic benefit over current maternal and child health interventions.
GSMA supports the NDOH through different angles, by informing concept note creation, presenting the interest of mobile operators as well as through sharing various research findings. In September 2013 we have published an in-depth mHealth Landscaping Report and a Country Feasibility Report. This year we are busy with:
- Primary research that will deepen our understanding of end consumers and Community Health Workers;
- The creation of a health economics tool that will help us understand the impact of maternal messages on health outcomes;
- A product and technology framework that will help us understand the ways that industry can support the NDoH end objective and contribute to MDGs 4, 5, and 6;
- An monitoring and evaluation (M&E) framework that, if incorporated by service providers, will help us evaluate and objectively present the value of mHealth;
- The business case.
We will be disseminating learnings on a bi-monthly basis. Today we would like to invite you to have a look at our new infographic. Please help us spread the word about what is happening in South Africa and help change become a reality.
Last but not least I would like to thank everyone that has contributed to the great work over the past few months. THANK YOU!
I would like to invite you to share your thoughts on this process and send through any open questions.
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.