mHealth Alliance
Mobile technology’s feasibility as a health solution is no longer in question.

“Countries are really looking at mHealth as a critical strategy towards improving the health and wellbeing of women and children in particular, but also in dealing with diseases like HIV and AIDS and malaria, Patricia Mechael asserted in an Oct. 2 interview with Healthcare IT News.

Mechael is the director of the mHealth Alliance, an organization that promotes the global integration of mobile technology into health systems, programs, and services.

Last September the Alliance announced the third round of its grant program for mHealth projects across the world. In association with NORAD and the Every Woman, Every Child Innovation Working Group, the Alliance provided catalytic grants to various mHealth projects to help them scale up from pilot stage.

Once involved in the program, the grantees form classes that network with each other, sharing their own best practices. This knowledge-sharing proves fruitful not just for the grantees, but for mHealth in general, since “out of [that networking], in collaboration with the World Health Organization, we capture those learnings and then develop tools and frameworks that can then be used by others who are looking to design and implement mHealth for maternal and child health programs,” Mechael said.

[See also: Growth in the cards for mobile market.]

The grantees had to meet the following criteria, “ingredients for success in mHealth,” as Mechael described them: “They have to have done some formative research that shows positive health outcomes in the use of their technology, they have to be engaged in public-private partnership, and they have to provide a letter of support, particularly from the public side to show there’s government buy-in.” This final requirement is especially important as a project’s disconnection from the public sector inhibits its sustainability and potential for scale.

Herein lies the project’s future direction.

“We’re spending a lot more time in the countries conducting capacity assessments with the grantees and then working to ensure linkages with other grantees and the broader ecosystem at the country level.” The Alliance now aims to bridge the gap between organizations working with mHealth and local governments struggling to implement mHealth solutions. By convening these organizations and stakeholders, the Alliance hopes to facilitate the creation of policy frameworks to ensure environments for scaling mHealth projects in their respective countries.

When asked which projects had been particularly successful, Mechael brought up cStock, the John Snow, Inc. program in Malawi that monitors health products inventory and reports stock-outs, and a UNICEF project in Uganda.

The latter project is exciting, said Mechael, because it links two platforms that are already scaled.

“What we’re seeing now in the mHealth evolution is greater integration between different technology approaches and systems so that you have broader reach and broader impact,” she said.

The UNICEF project links a citizen reporting platform, U-report, to health service delivery data, thereby allowing citizens to hold the health system more accountable. U-report has already allowed citizens to successfully lobby the Ugandan parliament to push through health funding for immunizations.

Australia: Personally controlled EHRs, telehealth pilots
Back in 2009, the Australian government began constructing the National Broadband Network, a project that aims to give all Australians access to high-speed broadband and telephone services. The project stands to provide the IT infrastructure that will enable the Australian Government to achieve its goal of positioning Australia as a leading digital economy by 2020, according to the Australian Department of Health website.

The NBN’s ongoing development has exciting implications for healthcare IT.

On July 1, 2012, the government launched its personally controlled electronic health record system. A PCEHR allows patients to detail their own health information on a secure, online platform.

“To date over 900,000 consumers have registered for an eHealth record. It is an opt-in system and consumers control which providers have access to their eHealth record,” said a spokesperson from the Australian Government Department of Health in a statement released to Healthcare IT News. The PCEHR Act established the circumstances in which patient information can be accessed outside a patient’s access controls, for example, in an emergency.

The Department of Health spokesperson noted, “PCEHR data is stored in a secure data center in Australia, in line with the Australian Government Protective Security Policy Framework.

As the number of Australian citizens and organizations -- including healthcare professionals and clinics -- with access to high-speed broadband increases, patients will be able to communicate more effectively with the providers they need.

[See also: Australian government launches telehealth initiative.]