mHEALTH: Critical Pathways to Evaluating the Impact

Patricia Mechael, PhD MHSmHealth & Telemedicine AdvisorMillennium Villages Project, Earth Institute at Columbia University

mHealth@MILLENNIUM VILLAGES PROJECT

Connectivity Upgrades: Ericsson has been working with local mobile service operators in 10 countries in Africa to improve and upgrade connectivity for communication and data transfer (planned for 15 MVP sites).

Improving intra-facility and staff communication: Working with local operators to build a calling network for health facility-based staff and community health workers (SIM cards from MTN and Zain & handsets from Sony Ericsson- 700+ donated to date).

Establishing rural-based Emergency Medical Services: Assessments and protocols for communication, triage, and transportation. Toll-free emergency numbers are being launched.

mHealth Applications Development building links to OpenMRS and reporting systems: CommCare (support tool for community health workers- pregnancy pilot project in Tanzania); ChildCount workflow and alert system –pilot project in Sauri nutrition monitoring and malaria); mLearning; survey tools

Telemedicine: Pilot Project in Ghana

Connectivity study: Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania

MILLENNIUM VILLAGES PROJECT: eHealth Ecosystem

Hypotheses to Test Increasing access to telecommunications

infrastructure improves access to health services and information and therefore improves health outcomes.

Increasing access to information through reference materials, patient data, and/or tele-consultation with more specialized personnel for health care workers improves quality of care and therefore health outcomes for patients.

Strategic integration of mobile technologies improves efficiency and lowers cost of health service delivery, management, and administration.

Monitoring and Evaluation

Thank you!For more information, please visit:http://cghed.ei.columbia.edu/?id=projects_dh

Or contact:Patricia Mechaelpmechael@gmail.com