In the Fall 2013 session of TechChange’s online course on mHealth – Mobiles for Public Health, several participants attended the fifth annual mHealth Summit, a dynamic conference welcoming clinical, policy, tech, business, and academic experts to reflect on the evolution and future of mHealth.

Setting up an exhibition booth, the TechChange team attended the 2013 mHealth Summit to document the perspectives of mHealth newcomers and experts alike. We were fortunate to see some of the guest experts in our upcoming mHealth class such as Kelly Keisling from NetHope and the mHealth Working Group, Alain Labrique from Johns Hopkins, and alumnus Apera Iorwakwagh of the mHealth Alliance.

Among those we interviewed at the 2013 mHealth Summit, Dr. Layla McCay, physician, policy influencer, Huffington Post blogger, and TC309 alumna, shared her online learning experience in TC309:

See a segment of her blog post, Why mHealth Is Caught Between Vision and Reality, submitted as a TC309 final project, and published on HuffPost Tech:

At the mHealth Summit, Steve Case defined the three stages of entrepreneurship as hype, hope, and happiness. The collective imaginations of Summit delegates have been inspired by “hype” — we believe in the potential of mHealth as a health service improvement tool. That’s why we showed up. This conference seems to be planting us firmly in the “hope” phase — we recognize the significant barriers, the practical challenges to implementation. These are still early days in mHealth. What’s clear is that while mHealth may be caught between vision and reality, it’s not stuck there. It’s going to be amazing. Eventually. When it is, we’ll move into the “happiness” phase, where the potential is realized: the infrastructure’s in place, and mHealth is just a conventional, effective tool that everyone’s using in health care. The specifics of what this success will look like is impossible to predict as the field is moving so fast. What can be easier predicted, is at this point, the entrepreneurs will circle to the next hype.

We look forward to hearing and reading more from Layla and other TC309 alumni!

Want to learn more about mHealth and the latest developments in mobile technology in public health? Register now for this 4-week online course on mHealth. Join Kendra Keith, a global health professional specializing in mHealth, as she facilitates of the Fall course starting November 17, 2014.

Kendra Keith

Kendra is a global health professional passionate about integrating mobile technologies in public health programs, particularly those targeting quality improvement of maternal and newborn health services, elimination of mother-to-child transmission of HIV, and meeting the information and training needs of community health workers. She has diverse mHealth experience including program pilot, evaluation and scale-up in Southern Province, Zambia and donor policy and implementation with the USAID Office of Health Systems. She is a “healthie”, holding a MPH from Boston University School of Public Health, but envious of all “techies”. As a TC309 alumna, she is excited to join the TechChange team to assist facilitation of the upcoming session.

How would you define mHealth?

Check out these mHealth definitions from a few of the attendees from last December’s mHealth Summit 2013 in Washington, DC, including several speakers and alumni from our mHealth online course:

Do you define mHealth differently or similarly? How has mHealth impacted your life and work?

Let us know, and join us for our next round of TC309: mHealth – Mobile Phones for Public Health!

The Eck Institute for Global Health at the University of Notre Dame is launching a  pilot initiative with TechChange to experiment with blended learning online and offline on the topic of mHealth: Mobiles for Public Health. As part of Notre Dame’s continuing experiments of best practices in online and hybrid learning,  this initiative of the Master of Science in Global Health program will be combining an on-campus class on mHealth taught by Professor Joseph Bock with TechChange’s mHealth online course. According to Dr. Bock, “This pilot course is an exciting initiative and we are eager to promote it.”

Notre Dame’s Master of Science in Global Health program is sponsoring 11 students and program directors to join TechChange’s mHealth online course in conjunction with Professor Joseph Bock’s face-to-face offline mHealth class, which aims to equip students with technical knowledge to apply mobile and Information Communications Technology (ICT) for global health challenges. The school will be receiving data on the students’ participation on the course platform from TechChange, which along with their written assignments for the Master of Science in Global Health class, will factor into determining the students’ grades. As the students will be logged in and participating in TechChange’s online learning platform, Professor Joseph Bock will be meeting in person with the students weekly to discuss the content on the TechChange mHealth course and the professor’s assignments.

In partnership with the mHealth Alliance, TechChange has offered this mHealth: Mobiles for International Development online course four times since 2012.  The course, which has been mentioned in the New York Times, has welcomed over 450 doctors, nurses, community health workers, and global public health experts who regularly participate in this online course from over 75 countries. Participants have included representatives of organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO), National Institutes of Health (NIH), Medicin Sans Frontieres (MSF) / Doctors Without Borders, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Cleveland Clinic, Global Health Corps, officials from ministries of health of several countries, and many more.

Notre Dame’s MS in Global Health students have been enthusiastic about beginning the mHealth course, which will run March 31 to April 25, 2014 – just before final exams and before the students travel abroad to pursue summer global health field and research projects. Several students plan on tying in their mHealth online learnings into their planned field work after this semester, including Michael Clark, who believes this mHealth course will help focus his current project to track mosquito-borne disease in Belize using a mobile database platform by meeting other global mHealth practitioners in the online class.

“The mHealth course will help focus my efforts in Belize as it teaches best practices learned through collaboration with local partners across the world,” says Michael Clark. “Further, I look forward to the invaluable tips for implementing ICT4D in previously technology-deprived areas, like rural Belize, that the expert lecturers and current global health practitioners will be able to provide.”

Jingmeng Xie plans to build upon her past experience at a Nairobi maternal health clinic (a Ford Family Program) by applying the content she learned in the mHealth classes to explore the roles mobile technology can play in public health. The MS in Global Health students, through the mHealth initiative, are diving deeply into the role that mobile data collection, electronic health records, and Information and Communications Technologies can promote better health for populations even in the most remote areas in the world. Another student, Thomas Ulsby, is preparing for his summer research trip to India where he hopes to learn how electronic reporting of blood glucose levels via mobile phones has impacted treatment plans for type I and type II diabetes.

We’re very excited to welcome these students from the University of Notre Dame and can’t wait to see how they’ll be applying their experience in mHealth to their summer field projects in India, Belize, Kenya, and beyond!

Interested in learning about mHealth this spring as well? Register now for our mHealth: Mobiles for Public Health online course.

 

TechChange Hope Phones donation mHealthWhat if your old phone could help improve the health of populations in developing nations? Did you know that 500,000 cell phones are discarded in the United States every day?

TechChange is donating phones to empower global health practitioners in developing countries via Medic Mobile’s Hope Phones mobile donation program. The program’s goal is to responsibly reduce hazardous waste from mobile electronics while simultaneously promoting public health in developing countries.

When Nick Martin and Medic Mobile’s president, Josh Nesbit, last met during PopTech 2013, they  instantly connected over their common interest in mHealth. Although the number of mobile phones and mobile subscriptions are increasing worldwide, there is still a significant need to empower global community health workers with these tools to promote better health for more people. According to the Medic Mobile, “If we can recycle just 1% of disposed phones each year, we can outfit 1 million health workers, improving the lives of 50 million people.”

There is also a need to learn the latest best practices and innovations in mHealth. Learn how you can donate your phone here and join us in our upcoming mHealth online course with the mHealth Alliance! This course regularly attracts an exciting global community of doctors, public health practitioners, mobile service providers, health research specialists, and others to learn how mobile technology can address HIV, tuberculosis, maternal health, vaccinations, and improve healthcare delivery. Hope to see you in the course!

Pre-natal education for new mothers via mobile phones

Mobile phones are more than just communications devices; they are also powerful tools to improve health care. Since 2012, TechChange and the mHealth Alliance have offered a four-week online certificate course in mHealth: Mobile Phones for Public Health.

Our mHealth course has brought together an incredible group of roughly 100 doctors, community health workers, academic researchers, IT administrators, and government officials from over 35 countries to share knowledge. Each time we do the course, we’ve been amazed at how mHealth has advanced global health.

Here are the three key mobile innovations changing the delivery of health care services that we’ll cover in our next course, which starts on November 18th.

1. Text Messages for Pregnant Mothers

Nearly 800 women die of childbirth or pregnancy-related complications every day, and 2.9 million newborn deaths occur every year. At the same time, at least 1 billion women in low- and middle-income countries own mobile phones, providing a promising opportunity to use mobile phones to improve maternal and child health. On Mother’s Day 2011, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton launched the Mobile Alliance for Maternal Action (MAMA), a public-private partnership between USAID, Johnson & Johnson, the mHealth Alliance, the United Nations Foundation, and BabyCenter.

MAMA message templates can be downloaded for free, which means any organization can take advantage of this content to prepare pregnant mothers for childbirth. In our online course, we’ll learn how to customize these messages for different contexts and help participants determine what technical platforms are best for delivering these messages. SMS technical platforms we plan to feature include FrontlineSMS, Telerivit, Voto Mobile, EngageSpark, and Textit.

2. Support for Community Health Workers

recent report by Dalberg found that Sub-Saharan Africa will need to train more than 1 million additional community health workers to keep up with health care demands. Medic Mobile and Last Mile Health are two organizations working to provide training to community health care workers in countries like Liberia and Malawi. They have teamed up to create a mobile network for a district in Liberia and to design a mobile application that will dramatically improve community health care worker training and management. This mobile app will also improve community health care worker communication with clinicians based in health facilities. The mobile platform will also include automatic data collection and a reporting system that will create stronger, more efficient systems to manage patient records and monitor data quality.

Learn about how these organizations are using mobile technology to provide training for community health care workers and what other technologies and strategies organizations can use to provide similar support to marginalized populations. As part of the mHealth course, we’ll feature workshops with some of the leading software platforms for data collection and patient management, including  CommCare and Magpi.

3. Moving Beyond the Pilot Phase

In recent years, a great deal of mHealth projects have entered the pilot phase, but few have gone on to reach scale. Among those that have scaled are Ureport, an SMS-based civic engagement platform based in Kenya, and Project Mwana in Zambia, which works to increase the testing and treatment of infants born with HIV. These projects show that with adequate preparation and when designing with scale in mind, it is possible to move beyond the pilot stage and increase the reach of mHealth programs.

However, sometimes barriers to scale can come from funders’ reluctance to support scaling programs rather than funding new and innovative ones. In our online mHealth course, we will look at strategies to get beyond scale, including human-centered design, working with funders, and learning from past mistakes.

 

We hope you decide to join us and meet all kinds of professionals from around the world working in the field of mHealth. Don’t miss out on what will be a great course!

Join this global mHealth learning community by signing up for the course today.

According to the mHealth Alliance, in developing countries, the average doctor to patient ratio is 1 doctor for every 250,000 patients. Yet those same countries account for nearly 80% of the over 5 billion mobile subscriptions worldwide.

For people everywhere, access to a mobile phone can mean better access to health information, which leads to more informed choices and improved well-being. A great example of how mobile phones are making a difference in promoting health is with the Mobile Alliance for Maternal Action partnership that “has developed free, adaptable messages informed by experts in maternal, newborn and child health” that are being used and downloaded by 161 organizations in 54 nations around the world.

To learn more about how mobile phones are affecting developing nations in the realms of public health and beyond, check out our upcoming courses on Mobiles for International Development and mHealth. Also see our guest blog post from the mPulse blog on how we’re teaming up again with mHealth Alliance to mobilize mobile health with online learning.

 

Infographic global mobile subscription vs. population 2014Estimates from the mHealth Alliance, the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, and Jana Mobile Inc. show that by 2014, the number of mobile subscriptions worldwide will exceed the global population. Between 2000 and 2014, subscriptions are estimated to increase from 750 million to over 7 billion (approximately a 933% increase).

What do these statistics mean for the world, especially in developing countries? What implications does mobile subscription expansion have for public health, banking, education, and agriculture? Why do mobiles matter for international development? What emerging mobile technology is having the greatest impact?

Learn more about the global impact of mobile technology with our TC105: Mobiles for International Development course, which runs September 8 – October 3, 2014.

 

With high expectations for mobile health initiatives, and a proliferation of pilot projects (see this map from Uganda), it can be easy to forget that the mHealth field is still young. Like any emergent industry, mHealth is currently experiencing growing pains, a few of which were highlighted by Tina Rosenberg in her recent New York Times article, “The Benefits of Mobile Health, On Hold”.

In the article, Rosenberg raises a number of important points. She cites, for example, the misalignment between expectations and current realities in mHealth:

“Roughly a decade after the start of mHealth, as the mobile health field has come to be known, these expectations are far from being met.  The delivery system is there.  But we don’t yet know what to deliver.”

She also highlights the pilot fatigue that has stricken mobile-saturated countries such as Uganda and South Africa, as both public and private sector actors rush to become first-movers in the mHealth space. In some cases this has led to lack of coordination and limited impact.

But there is a silver lining. New research is underway in the mHealth space, and leading actors in are learning from past mistakes to design more effective platforms. Projects such as UNICEF’s Project Mwana have successfully introduced simplicity to a complex health system. And stakeholders are beginning to wake up to the fact that technology is only one part (and often the easiest part) of the equation.

This issue was addressed by Patricia Mechael, executive director of the mHealth Alliance, in the NY Times article: “We can get excited about the shiny new object, but the real impact comes from thinking about the cultural and professional context in which it’s being implemented.” How are mHealth platforms adapting to new realities, and reacting to emergent challenges?

This will be a key point of discussion in our upcoming Mobile Phones for Public Health online certificate course, in which Mechael will speak as a guest expert. The course, which begins next week and runs from June 3 to June 28, already has participants signed up from over 25 countries.

Through case studies, guest expert interviews, multimedia tutorials, interactive exercises and live demonstrations of mHealth tools, the course will showcase how mobile technologies are revolutionizing global health systems – and how various challenges can be overcome. While current mHealth projects may not yet be meeting lofty expectations, they are certainly moving in the right direction.

For even more information about the course, visit the course page or take a look at the syllabus. To make sure you get a seat, fill out an application here and enroll today!

Our mHealth: Mobile Phones for Public Health Online Certificate course will run for its second time from June 3rd – 28th and we couldn’t be more excited about it. Along with The mHealth Alliance, we have had six months to reflect on course feedback and refine curriculum to make sure we are offering the most comprehensive and enjoyable online instruction possible.

mHealth101 Twitterchat (1)

Twitter Chat Contest:

Want to win a free seat? Then join us for a Twitter chat using #mHealth101 on Thursday, May 17th at 2 pm EDT to be entered in a random drawing! @Techchange and@mHealthAlliance will be co-hosting the event and will be discussing course curriculum, mHealth trends, and case studies. More details to come but tweet at @TechChange or @mHealthAlliance if you have questions and we look forward to having you join us!

What is the Course Structure?

Students will have the opportunity to engage directly with leading applications developers, and learn from practitioners who have had significant experience in implementing mobile phone based communication systems around the globe.

The entire course is delivered online. The total time commitment is a minimum of 2-5 hours a week. The course is designed to be highly interactive and social, but we also work hard to ensure that the majority of the content can be experienced in a self-paced manner. It will feature one or two real-time interactions each week, such as live discussions, live expert interviews, and live simulations. In order to accommodate busy schedules of mission staff from around the world, we’ve set up a learning environment where participants have plenty of options to explore content that is most relevant to them through live content and interactions, readings, and videos.

Facilitators will produce weekly audio podcast recaps for participants to catch up on key conversations and topics. Participants can also access all course content six months after course completion so the material can be revisited later.

Schedule:

●   Week 1: Introduction to Mobile Health

●   Week 2: Strengthening Health Systems

●   Week 3: Moving Towards Citizen-Centered Health

●   Week 4: Large Scale Demonstration Projects

 

For even more information about the course, visit the course page or take a look at the syllabus. To make sure you get a seat, fill out an application here and get enrolled.

 

We’re excited to partner with the mHealth Alliance yet again to offer our Mobile Phones for Public Health for open enrollment. And we think it matters: When it comes to IC4D (or M4D) projects, even the best technology is often not as helpful as the latest best practices. Patty Mechael, the Executive Director of the mHealth Alliance, was recently quoted in an NYT article about lessons learned from the past ten years of “mobile phones for public health” concluded:

“The tech is only as good as the people it is connecting or system it’s connected to,” Mechael said. ”We can get excited about the shiny new object, but the real impact comes from thinking about the cultural and professional context in which it’s being implemented.”

That same article cast a skeptical eye on the impact of many mHealth programs to date, but singled out Project Mwana as being successful on a large scale in Zambia and Malawi for testing babies of H.I.V.-positive women. When asked to describe what makes Mwana work, Erica Kochi, the co-leader of tech innovation for UNICEF (and confirmed speaker in our upcoming course) described: “Incredible simplicity….It’s not trying to replace the health information system.  For its users, it makes things easier rather than adding more

Nick Martin interviewing Merrick Schaefer

mHealth Interview with Merrick Schaefer on Project Mwana

complexity to an already difficult, challenging health system.”

But mHealth solutions aren’t as simple as scaling successful programs irrespective of context. It requires creating an ongoing dialogue between public health professionals, the medical community, technologists, and government funders.

To that end, we’ve attempted to not just build a successful-project showcase, but a conversation that includes the following speakers and organizations:

  • Robert Fabricant, Frog Design
  • Gustav Praekelt, Praekelt Foundation
  • Alain Labrique, JHU University
  • Sarah Emerson, Center for Disease Control Tanzania
  • Erika Cochi, UNICEF Innovation
  • Yaw Anokwa, Nafundi
  • Martin Were, Regenstrief Institute; Hamish Fraser, Partners in Health
  • Armstrong Takang, Federal Ministry of Health
  • Kirsten Gagnaire, MAMA Global
  • Lesley-Anne Long, mPowering Frontline Workers; Sandhya Rao, USAID

Class starts June 3rd. Visit the mHealth course page to apply and reserve your spot today. Seats are filling up quickly. We hope that you’ll join the conversation!