Oral

With the dramatic rise in the use of mobile phones in developing countries, a wide range of mobile health or mHealth programs are emerging that aim to strengthen health behaviors and health care systems using different approaches. This solicited session will present a sample of current experience from the field of mHealth. The first two presentations will focus on the use of cell phones to improve maternal care. Design issues in the development of an mHealth project for maternal and newborn care in Timor-Leste will be followed by a discussion of the monitoring and evaluation framework of a major mHealth project being implemented in three countries. A project in Malawi using cell phones for a hotline addressing maternal, newborn and child health problems as well as an SMS “tips and reminders” service will present findings from their evaluation of the social return on investment in that program. Finally, lessons learned from five years experience with a mobile health tool used in over 25 countries for client tracking and case management in community health programs will be presented. This session is expected to have very broad participation, both because of widespread interest in the topic as well as the many different approaches that mHealth programs take. Although the number of mHealth projects is growing rapidly, there is broad consensus that convincing evaluations of their effectiveness is lacking. These presentations will provide a detailed description of a set of existing mHealth projects and will also present approaches for measuring their effectiveness.

Session Objectives: By the end of this session, participants will be able to describe a range of decisions to be made in the design of an mHealth project for improved maternal care; describe key components of a monitoring and evaluation framework for a maternal care mobile phone project; explain how a telephone hotline and ‘tips and reminders’ service can provide a social return on investment; and present evidence for the effectiveness of a mobile client tracking and case management tool in improving community health services.