MobiHealth: Developing Health Service Networks through Mobile Solutions in Low Resource Settings

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MobiHealth extends the vision of health services information infrastructure to the villages drawing upon the potential of mobile IT solutions. The international consortium behind MobiHealth is cross disciplinary (informatics, medicine, public health) comp rising researchers, users, as well as providers of health infrastructure and information systems. Using action research, the project develops new knowledge on how to build sustainable health service networks in low recourse settings. Health service net works refers to the multitude of vertical and horizontal ties between health workers, possibly also clients, in low-resource environments. Given the existing insufficient support of such networks, it is relevant to investigate to what extent and in which ways that health service networks can be enhanced through the use of mobile technology. In particular, we want to explore how to strengthen the social network's capacity for knowledge creation and sharing. A key focus in the project is to understand the potentials and challenges for the community health workers to use mobile phones to support their information needs and their communication processes. This knowledge will be built empirically by developing, implementing and evaluating pilots on mobile app lications in one district in India, Malawi, Nigeria and Vietnam. We aim at develop generic software on a mobile platform that can support different reporting needs from various health programs.