Title: Mobiles Phones for Health Worldwide: Moving From Hype to Context and Benefit
Author: Anne-Ryan Heatwole
Source: MobileActive.org
Date (published): 09/12/2011
Date (accessed): 13/12/2011
Type of information: article
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
"We recently attended the mHealth Summit 2011 to learn more about the latest developments in the mobile health field. The conference brought together developers, practitioners, NGOs, representatives from corporate industries, and government officials to discuss the current state and future of mobile health.

Several key trends emerged among the discussions, focusing on: local buy-in and capacity building, the importance of building partnerships and trust among communities, and the need to transition from short-term pilots to scalable, sustainable mHealth projects.
…
Lessons Learned
The conference focused heavily on the potential of mobiles, but many of the speakers were careful to temper the promise with frank discussions about the reality of challenges in mobile health work such as local buy-in, sustainability, patient adherence, and technological capacity and capabilities. Ultimate takeaways from the mHealth Summit 2011 were that while there is a lot of hype around the industry, practitioners and developers are learning what works and what doesn’t and are able to begin more honest and productive conversations about what makes m-health work in the long run. By focusing on the actual beneficiaries, building local capacity and partnerships, and planning for scale and sustainability, m-health seems to finally be moving away from hype to more context-specific, integrated approaches and platforms. "

Title: Text-Messaging for Health Still Has Its Challenges
Author: Larisa Epatko>
Source: PBS NewsHour
Date (published): 05/10/2011
Date (accessed): 17/10/2011
Type of information: article
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
"At first glance, text-messaging health alerts to poor, rural populations with widespread mobile phone use is a no-brainer. But what about the challenges of providing useful information and the simple act of re-charging phones in isolated spots?

On a planet of nearly 7 billion people, 5 billion use mobile phones -- and of those mobile phone subscribers about 70 percent are in emerging economies, according to U.N. estimates.

It's no wonder health organizations are looking to the massive medium as a means to inform the public on health news, and in particular help populations that don't have easy access to medical treatment.

The use of mobile phones for medical purposes, known as mHealth, has been around for a decade and new projects are launching all the time.

For example, pregnant women in countries such as India and South Africa who can't visit doctors regularly now can register their due dates and receive SMS -- or text -- messages with information that matches up with their babies' development, such as what food they should be eating.

In Bangladesh, parents can receive alerts telling them when to bring their children into clinics for vaccinations.

In the United States, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius recently announced a new initiative to text-message tips and health information to motivate people to quit smoking.

But despite the promising implications for health, there are still some challenges to overcome -- as those involved in the effort can attest."

Title: New technologies altering healthcare landscape, says UN report
Author: Mićo Tatalović
Source: SciDev.net
Date (published): 20/09/2011
Date (accessed): 21/09/2011
Type of information: article
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
"New ways of doing business, often triggered by novel technologies, have up-ended public and private sector roles in development — offering a new landscape of healthcare opportunities for women and children in developing countries, according to a UN report.

The fundamental change is that it is now the private sector that is creating infrastructure, and the public sector is arriving afterwards to exploit it for health purposes, according to the co-author of the report, Tore Godal, a medical doctor and special advisor on global health to the Norwegian prime minister.

The report, 'Innovating for Every Woman, Every Child', published last week (12 September) by The Lancet, highlights business models that could harness new infrastructure to improve the health of women, children and infants in low-income countries."

Title: From No Doctor to E-Doctors in Rural India
Author: Emily Singer
Source: Technology Review
Publisher: MIT
Date (published): 15/09/2011
Date (accessed): 18/09/2011
Type of information: article
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
"A telemedicine company brings $1 virtual checkups to poor countries.

There aren't too many doctors in the village of Hari Ke Kalan, in the Punjab region of northern India. But for $1, residents who bicycle to a new health clinic can get an appointment with a physician appearing on a large-screen television and beamed in over broadband Internet.

The clinic, built by a startup called Healthpoint Services, is one of a network of eight "e-health points" that the for-profit company has built in India as part of a growing effort by entrepreneurs to capitalize on the rapid expansion of cellular and broadband access in the poorest parts of the world. With successes such as text-message-based mobile payments taking off in some countries, many experts see medicine as the next major application of technology in poor nations."

Title: Smart Connect: a SMS communication appliance for rural healthcare
Author: Eric Blantz
Source: ICTWorks
Date (published): 06/07/2011
Date (accessed): 14/07/2011
Type of information: blog post/article
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
"SMS’s reach and reliability, combined with its popularity among users, make it particularly attractive to those working on applications for the developing world, where Internet and smart phones are not yet widely available or affordable.
...
Enter Smart Connect, a “communication appliance” developed by PATH and Inveneo which uses SMS to improve the reliability and performance of one of the most important systems in all of global health: the medical “cold chain.”
...
We decided to make Smart Connect a facility based device. Even though it has many parts in common with a cell phone, it is constructed to be secured in place. We did this to improve security of the device, to ensure that the device was associated with the health facility, to allow it to connect with external sensors and to make it possible to connect to an external antenna for improved reception.

One of the first applications for Smart Connect is temperature monitoring of vaccine refrigerators. Refrigerators which regularly drop below freezing are quite common – so it is important to bring these to the attention of cold chain managers. Temporary power disruptions and breakdowns are also a problem since they lead to vaccines getting too hot.
...
Previously, refrigerator temperatures were tracked and recorded by hand with long delays in collecting the records. Now Smart Connect records the refrigerator temperature and sends out alert messages when there is a problem. Messages are sent to a web site and then automatically relayed to service technicians. A daily summary of refrigerator temperatures is also sent to the web site so that the manager can understand how well the equipment is functioning.

Beyond temperature monitoring, Smart Connect has the capacity to run a range of additional applications. For example, the Smart Connect deployment in Vietnam includes an application to track the use of vaccines so that that “stock outs” can be avoided. In the future, we plan for Smart Connect to be used with a bar code scanner to be able to read tags on vaccines when they arrive, and a printer to be able to provide receipts of test results to patients.

With Smart Connect we have seen that a small amount of communication delivered by SMS can have a big impact. By “thinking outside of the phone” we have created a custom communication device that meets the specific needs of rural health facilities and improves healthcare services in communities in Nicaragua, Vietnam and beyond."

Title: From euphoria to pragmatism: The experience and the potentials of eHealth in Asia
Author: Ranmalee Gamage
Source: LIRNEasia
Date (published): 22/09/2010
Date (accessed): 26/09/2010
Type of information: blog post
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
"The public lecture entitled, ‘From euphoria to pragmatism: The experience and the potentials of eHealth in Asia’ was held at The Sri Lanka Medical Association on 14 September 2010.

The lecture was on eHealth, which is being adapted widely, from primary to tertiary healthcare in many countries.. Especially, using more appropriate and relevant technologies, such as mobile technologies in tele-health and health informatics.

Dr. Angelo Ramos, a physician by training and an expert in public health education and promotion began with a presentation on From Euphoria to Pragmatism: The experience and potentials of eHealth in Asia. He pointed out that a vast expanse of research on eHealth has been conducted in developed countries. He emphasized the benefits of eHealth and how governments and other stakeholders can help to improve it."

Title: A Dedicated Satellite for Meeting Health Education Needs of Afro-Asian Nations: Possibilities, Action Plan and Benefits
Author: Praddep Kumar Misra
Pages: 12 pp.
ISSN: 1681-4835
Source: The Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries, EJISDC (2010) 41, 6, 1-12
Publisher: City University of Hong Kong
Date (published): 06/05/2010
Date (accessed): 28/06/2010
Type of information: peer-reviewed article
Language: English
On-line access: yes (pdf)
Abstract:
The World Health Organization (WHO) reported that regardless of promises of better healthcare by governments and donor countries, millions of mothers, newborn babies and children continue to die each year in Africa from preventable diseases. The Asian countries are no exception. This situation warns us to analyze existing health education challenges in Afro-Asian nations and look for innovative strategies to overcome these challenges. The launch of a dedicated Afro-Asian Satellite will help to overcome health education challenges by strengthening the system that serves the people and by creating a partnership between the providers and users of health services. Considering this approach, the present paper discusses about possibilities, benefits and action plan for launching a dedicated satellite to meet the health education needs of the Afro-Asian nations.

Title: Implementing Healthcare Information in Rural Communities in Sri Lanka: A Novel Approach with Mobile Communication
Author: Indika Perera
Pages: 6 pp.
Source: Health Informatics in Developing Countries, Vol.3 (No.2), 2009
Publisher: University of Otago and COMSATS Institute of Information Technology
Date (published): 30/08/2009
Date (accessed): 28/04/2010
Type of information: peer-reviewed article
Language: English
On-line access: yes (pdf)
Abstract:
Access to effective and efficient healthcare services without any difficulty is one of the essential parameters to consider for a country’s sustainable development. Though developing countries put much emphasis on improving their healthcare services, the disparity between service consumption of rural communities compared to their urban counterpart is still very visible. The effect is merely due to the disparity in service penetration levels between the urban and rural regions. Sri Lanka is also struggling to improve this scenario with various policy and tactical level approaches, yet there is lot to achieve. Improving healthcare and utility services through Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) is a prime research area among the scholars today. Like many other developing countries, Sri Lanka also initiated some projects to improve the healthcare sector infrastructure through ICT. This paper describes the need of a novel approach to provide better healthcare service to rural communities in Sri Lanka and details about such project which is at its final stages of development.

Title: Analysing the Challenges of IS implementation in public health institutions of a developing country: the need for flexible strategies
Author: Shegaw Anagaw Mengiste
Pages: 17 pp.
Source: Health Informatics in Developing Countries, Vol.4 (No.1), 2010
Publisher: University of Otago and COMSATS Institute of Information Technology
Date (published): 25/03/2010
Date (accessed): 28/04/2010
Type of information: peer-reviewed article
Language: English
On-line access: yes (pdf)
Abstract:
This paper explores the challenges of introducing computer-based health information systems in the context of the Ethiopian public health care system. Drawing empirical examples from the process of introducing computer-based health information system(HIS) in two regional states (Amhara and Benishangul-Gumuz) of Ethiopia, this paper analyses the socio-technical challenges influencing the transition towards a new computerised system and suggested the importance of developing context-sensitive strategies to tackle different challenges in different contexts. Building on the notions of installed base and cultivation the paper examines the socio-technical issues and factors that influenced the process of developing, customizing, and implementing computerised HIS in different settings. The findings of this paper revealed that contextual differences in terms of access to infrastructural reources, availability of adaquate and qualified manpower, and managerial commitment and support would significantly influence the implementation process. I argue that, such context-senitive challenges need to be dealt through flexible startegies that took in to account the specific context. In this paper, four diffferent flexible strategies: the strategy of gateways, top-down vs bottom-up approaches, flexible essential data sets and clustering have beed identified as being useful in implementing computer-based systems in different settings of the Ethiopian public health care system.

Title: SMS Project Fights Malaria In Africa
Author: Mitch Wagner
Source: Information Week
Publisher: United Business Media LLC
Date (published): 15/12/2009
Date (accessed): 21/12/2009
Type of information: article
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
IBM interns are teaming up with Novartis and Vodafone to use text messaging and the Web to fight malaria in Africa.

The three companies, along with the Roll Back Malaria Partnership, are piloting a project called SMS for Life to use text messaging and Web sites built with Lotus Live collaboration tools to track and manage supplies of anti-malarial drugs, IBM said.