Challenges of Mobile Health Applications in Developing Countries - E-Healthcare Systems and Wireless Communications - page 8

TB, malaria, etc., can help health organizations
better track the regions where these diseases have
emerged and target medical resources to these
geographic areas more effectively. AESSIMS and
Voxiva Health Watch are some of the surveillance
programs currently active in this field.
Chronic disease management and treatment
compliance applications : Some diseases require
a strict medical regimen to be followed to avoid
complications for individual patients. Health care
workers can monitor patients and immediately
identify symptoms in patients that require urgent
attention. Poor medication adherence leads to
increasingly poor health outcomes for patients,
therefore, text messages sent by physicians to
their patients have shown to increase medical
adherence. Examples of this approach include
the WelTel program in Kenya and Diabediario
in Mexico.
Remote Data Collection : Projects in this area
aim to link hospitals and health care workers with
data collectors and databases that house medical
information. This is especially useful for govern-
ment policy makers who can use the data to make
decisions on where to assign medical resources
and to identify which areas need more attention.
In all these areas, a growing number of devel-
oping countries use mobile technology to address
these health needs. A recent study on various
Mobile Health care applications in developing

countries [United Nations, 2008] provided an
overview of 51 mHealth programs that are either
currently operating or slated for implementation
in the near future. Figure 2 shows the geographic
and application area breakdown of these programs.

Challenges and Promises of Mobile
Health Systems in Developing
Countries

The mHealth Alliance (http://www.mHealthal-
liance.org/, 2010) was founded in 2009 by
the Rockefeller Foundation, UN Foundation,
Vodafone Foundation, GSM Association, and
PEPFAR (President's Emergency Plan for AIDS
Relief) to advance innovation and impact in the
health field using information technology, e.g.,
by establishing open standards-based health
technology platforms and by prototyping and
helping deploy sustainable and scalable mHealth
solutions. This alliance will be a major contribu-
tor to encouraging and building mHealth systems
to improve access, efficiency, and the quality of
health care services in the developing world. The
continuing proliferation and advancement of cell
phones (and smart phones) will continue to push
mHealth to become an integral part of health care
delivery (see Table 1). However, mHealth also
faces various barriers and challenges that must
be overcome, including the poor infrastructure

Figure 2. Distribution of mHealth programs by location and application area (United Nations, 2008)