mHealth4Afrika – Strengthening Healthcare Delivery in Resource Constrained Environments

This presentation will share insight into the origins of this Initiative, the co-design and validation process undertaken, lessons learnt, results to date, and plans for the future.

Co-designed with Ministries of Health, District Health Offices, Health Facility Managers, and Nurses from rural and deep rural health facilities in Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, and South Africa, mHealth4Afrika is a comprehensive, standards based technology and capacity building solution designed to complement and gradually replace the use of traditional hardcopy patient registries.

Co-funded by the European Commission, mHealth4Afrika was co-designed and validated in 23 healthcare facilities (including county and referral hospitals) in Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, and South Africa, serving a total catchment population of c.875,000 people.

It provides an adaptable, extensible, modular, multi-lingual and standards-based electronic health platform to support longitudinal “cradle to grave” medical records, integrating: Electronic Health Record (EHR) and Electronic Medical Record (EMR) functionality; use of Medical Sensors at the point of care; analytical, visualisation and decision support tools; automatic generation of program-specific aggregate data for District Health Offices & Ministries of Health; SMS Appointment Reminders; and integration with a Laboratory Test System.

This presentation will share insight into the origins of this Initiative, the co-design and validation process undertaken, lessons learnt, results to date and plans for the future, and facilitate discussion of ethical implications of research and innovation interventions in resource-constrained environments.