‘Opportunities & Challenges to

enhance village level healthcare in

South & Southeast Asia through ICT

and energy access

Over 12,500 frontline health workers

In Africa and Asia use our tools

Delivering care for over 1 million families

95% of the global Has access to a mobile signal

Designing new systems of care

Focus on health workers using principles of human-centered design

Building health systems that reach everyone

Tools for basic phones Easy-to-use tools for health workers, household caregivers,

and patients

Tools for smart phones Easy-to-use tools for health workers, household caregivers,

and patients

The Medic Mobile app Android app for frontline health workers and managers

However, the path to scale and

impact involves much more than

just technology

Scale “Buckets”

Infrastructure

Success of field level eHealth health

deployments are highly dependent on energy

access.

Electrical grid has not expanded as rapidly as

access to cell signals.*

Even if access to electricity is in place the

choice of the right hardware is critical.

* Source: World Bank 2016

Human Resources

While Community Health Workers may own

cell phones, they may not be aware of all of

the extended features.

Adequate training and refresher trainings are

needed.

In the end, health workers have to see a

benefit for themselves if they are to continue

using an eHealth tool.

Users

● Female Community Health

Volunteers (FCHVs) - Nepal’s

national network of

community health volunteers

● Health workers (nurses and

mid-level physicians) at all

primary health care facilities i

● Public Health Nurses,

Administrators and

Statisticians at the district

health office .

Financial Sustainability

Digital health initiatives often cost much more

than originally planned. ……Surprise.

Local community must be engaged and “own”

the digital health initiative.

Government and/or the community must

have a plan for uptake by end of the pilot

evaluation.

Impact

Lots of eHealth pilots…very little evidence of

impact AND scale. (Especially at

village/community level)

It’s not just about the data.. It is about health

outcomes.

Coordination between health verticals.

Everybody wants their data, but what does the

community want.

We don’t need another app

We need: Better coordination, build an evidence base and advocacy

for digital best practices.

Building an evidence base

Building an Evidence Base

• Build evidence base on health outcomes

• Full cost analysis, Cost per CHW, Cost per

patient, including hardware refresh and

retrainings

• Pathways to scale: MoH, Partnerships,

Private Sector

Advocacy

Advocacy • Push for Digital Principles: Design for scale,

Design for Sustainability, Reuse and

Improve*

• Collaborate with government to build

regulatory frameworks.

• Data/SMS costs

• Work much more closely with groups solving

energy infrastructure issues in communities.

* From Principles for Digital Development found at

http://digitalprinciples.org

Working together to: • Build an evidence base

• Implement digital principles + best practices

• Scale what we know works , develop protocols

• Pathways to care for NCDs

• Ecosystem information/background in country

• MoH and MoE collaboration.

Questions and Discussions

jay@medicmobile.org | medicmobile.org

We are all health workers @medic

Thank you