mLearning: A Platform for Educational Opportunities at the Base of the Pyramid

The GSMA Development Fund is pleased to announce the publication of its new report entitled mLearning :  A Platform for Educational Opportunities at the Base of the Pyramid.  This is an exciting area exploring how mobile devices can be used as an intervention tool to extend the reach and raise access to educational resources at the base of the pyramid. The GSMA's initial thoughts and findings have been compiled into this comprehensive report with an aim of generating the thinking that will catalyse the growth of mLearning in the future.

 

The key areas highlighted in the report are :

• The current challenges facing learning today
• The benefits and opportunities afforded to and by mLearning
• An interesting selection of case studies 
• Recommendations for Mobile Network Operators and how to get involved.

If you would like to read more about this exciting area, download your copy here

RE: Mobile money services in health care

In this two-part series, MobileActive.org explores how mobile money services can support health care in developing countries. In part one, we described the key ways in which mobile money services can be adopted by the health sector.  At the primary level of care, subscription-based mobile payment services can create two-way links between patients and health care providers, as summarized here…

http://www.mobileactive.org/mobile-money-mobile-health-use-cases

 

 

 

Live from CHIM workshop

Abigail explaining security settings in OpenMRS, then demonstrating patient search by finding CHIM's Richard Darku's record - he just registered himself using the mForms app.

Live from CHIM Workshop!

Antoinette and Freddy Amponsah of CHIM connect live to the call center through the MOTECH toll free hotline.

Live from the MoTeCH Support Center

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Today was the first day with a fully staffed support center operating
out of their new office. Abigail and Antoinette manned our support
center in style, ready to take on any and all calls, SMS messages and
emails from all of our MoTeCH users, with gusto. They've already done a
great job over the last few weeks doing these same tasks, but now they
have a nice new, quiet home outside of the field so they can take
registration calls from Mobile Midwife registrants without a chorus of
babies at CWC outreach in the background.

Observation's from MoTeCH First CWC Outreach - July 6, 2010

The leaves of the shea nut tree at Kurugu CHPS Compound could only protect us for so long. The configuration of wooden benches, health record books, and babies fell neatly in the shade at the start of last Tuesday’s Child Welfare Clinic (CWC). But as the sun moved across the sky, families started to grow uncomfortable in the heat. Vaccinations and Vitamin A supplements were paused momentarily to move everyone back into the shade, but a few spats were inevitable as mothers differed in their recollection of who came after whom. Despite the weather, the crowds, and being several months pregnant, Community Health Officer Erica kept a cool head and managed to see all 100+ children.


Attendance at that day’s CWC was slightly higher than usual because the community got wind that MoTeCH and Mobile Midwife registrations would be taking place. However, this is a pretty typical day for the staff at a CHPS (Community Health and Planning Services) compound. Long queues of patients and few health care providers mean that each patient encounter is relatively brief and formulaic. Provision of care is centered around the big killers—polio, diphtheria, pertussis, haemophilus influenza, measles, malaria, worms, malnutrition—but with such time and staffing constraints, there is little flexibility to respond to emerging and, even worse, emergent illness. Furthermore, how do they treat the patient who isn’t at the facility to begin with?

The very first release of MoTeCH takes steps to ensure that no one falls off the map by calling patients to remind them that they are due for care. MoTeCH also identifies the patients who are past due and notifies the CHPS staff every Monday morning at 8am by text message. Previously, it would take at least a month to know that someone has defaulted. This delay can be devastating in the delicate first months of life. And once you’re done manually processing all those hand-written records to identify the at-risk individuals, there’s no time left to track them down.

MoTeCH has the potential to transform health care delivery in the UER beyond mere efficiency gains, however. Patient records are currently bound into massive ledgers: one for children, one for pregnancies, and one for sick visits. The book you are carrying that day prescribes your approach to your patient. When you are carrying your Nokia 1680 Classic with MoTeCH version 0.6.8, you are pressed to think about the patient in front of you and determine what care that individual needs. Perhaps this 4-year old is here for a weight check, but as I pick him up to put him in the weighing sling, I notice he feels warm—how long has he had that fever and cough? A pregnant woman might come in with symptoms of malaria, only for you to discover that she hasn’t had any prenatal care thus far. Having more time is great. Spending that time doing the right work is even better.

--Posted by Amanda K Johnson.  Amanda K. Johnson is a second-year MD candidate at Harvard Medical School working with MoTeCH for the summer. 

Training Nurses on MoTeCH, by Williams Kwarah

Though the use of mobile phones is permeative in my community today, its application in healthcare delivery is remote. It has never crossed my mind as to how to use a mobile phone to deliver useful health information to clients and health workers until I joined the MoTeCH team about a month ago. There, I began to appreciate the dynamism of technology, that a mobile application will not only ease the work load on the nurse but will regularly send useful and time-specific information to the pregnant woman and children. This is a wonderful innovation which will go a long way to improve the health status of rural communities. Indeed, access to health information is one major constraint that accounts for most unfortunate occurrences in healthcare delivery in rural communities. Thus, I do not only see MoTeCH as a means to unburdening the workload of the nurse and disseminating information to pregnant women and children, but an appropriate and cost-effective intervention that will promote health education in impoverished communities.

Working with Grameen Foundation is a rare opportunity that will push me into new directions whilst at the same time consolidating my vast medical experience with technology. I see it as a chance to indirectly contribute to the provision of quality healthcare services to my people.

Over the past 3 weeks, the team has been training community health officers (CHOs), midwifes and other supporting staff in the selected CHPS zones and health centres on the use of the mobile phones. These training sessions were interspersed with durbars which all fun to partake.

TRAINING

It is amazing to note that although I have not received a formal one-on-one training on the use of the MoTeCH mobile phone system, except for a couple of non-formal sessions with Maria (MoTeCH Field Officer), the system is intuitive enough for me to have been able to learn it very quickly. I have therefore participated in training the nurses in a comprehensible manner that is overwhelming. I felt honoured when I was called to take some august visitors from Monitor Group, South Africa, to see how MoTeCH was training health staff on the use of the mobile phones. I took them to Kajelo CHPS compound. There, I took the nurses through a complete training session while the visitors observed. Afterwards, the nurses were singularly interviewed. This was a great moment to interact and meet with new people and to demonstrate how MoTeCH will be working in the field. I was delighted to realize the visitors were impressed by everything; that gives me more strength to go on.

Overall, the training of community health staff has been very interesting. Most of the younger staff readily pick things quite easily, (they can use the appropriate forms when given simple and complicated scenarios), whereas the much older midwifes have various levels of difficulty. Most find it difficult to even access the MoTeCH application in the phone. Thus, for them, we have trained other supporting staff who will assist them.

Left: Williams training a midwife at Sirigu Health Centre

Notwithstanding the above challenges, we have trained virtually all the staff target to use the mobile phones on two separate sessions.

At the end of the week, we also took all mobile phones that were given to these nurses for practice back to base for configuration prior to final deployment. We also took note of the various outreach dates and venues for the various facilities to enable us plan adequately for launching and mass registration.

DURBAR

In the course of the week, we participated in a Durbar at Nayagnia to commission a CHPS compound. The event was grand with the Upper East Regional Minister, the Regional Director of Health Service, Kirsten Gagnaire (Project Manager, MoTeCH) and a host of others from Columbia University, DHMT etcetera present. The community turn-out was great! The people drummed and danced with ecstasy. Unfortunately, I did not get the opportunity to dance to the local tunes. I hope to get that some other time. I had to leave the grounds with the team just in time to have a training session at Chiana and Katiu.

Williams Kwarah is a MoTeCH Field Officer, and who very recently joined the project. He is from Navrongo.