global health | TechChange | The Institute for Technology and Social Change

By Lauren Bailey, TC309: mHealth – Mobile Phones for Public Health alumna

My final project for TechChange’s mHealth online course overlapped a final project for a master level global environmental health course. I’m currently working towards a Master of Public Health degree, concentrating in global environmental health, and specifically focusing in water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH). I recently became interested in mHealth and decided to do my global environmental health course project on mHealth in the WASH sector. Since I was new to mHealth, I kept the project simple, touching on some basics. This background document includes: (1) applications of mHealth in WASH; (2) case studies; and (3) recommendations.

Throughout TC309, I became increasingly interested in how mHealth can be applied to behavior change, a major component of reducing WASH-related illness. The mHealth online course has been a wonderful way to learn about the different applications of mHealth, the challenges and successes of programs, and the future possibilities of mHealth. I’ve been inspired by many of the articles, discussions, and live presentations and am now incorporating mHealth into my master’s thesis.

Here is the infographic I created, using Piktochart as part of my course project:

Highlights:

Mobile phones offer a means to reach most at-risk populations, particularly those in rural areas, to change health outcomes.
More individuals in most African countries will have access to a mobile phone than they will to an improved water source by 2013.
Mobile phones have been deployed over the past decade as tools to improve water, sanitation, and hygiene.
Client education and behavior change communication, data collection and reporting, financial transactions and incentives, and supply chain management are potential mHealth applications categories.

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To read Lauren’s entire final project from the online course, mHealth: Mobile Phones for Public Health, please click here.

Interested in learning more about how mobile phones are impacting WASH, healthcare, and promoting health worldwide? Register now for our 4-week online on mHealth here.

What 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!

Thanks to our new partnership with iHeed and Mobento, you can now search for content inside our educational videos, as well as store them on your Android phone for offline use.

Earlier this month, we were excited to announce that our content would be included in the Mobento Global Health Channel as part of a mobile partnership aiming to tackle health in developing countries. While we have made our animated videos and course content available in our own Media Library, we’re grateful for this opportunity to contribute to this new and powerful online video learning platform.

While we’re passionate about creating original video content in our courses, this information-rich format is not easily searchable, meaning that content locked inside has to be manually extracted for use. We’ve tried to get around this by limiting animations to 5-7 minute single-subject clips and then permitting event archives to go considerably longer (and when possible, accompanied by an agenda), but ultimately, video is video.

Well, until now. Thanks to Mobento search, our videos will have search terms identified in spoken words and metadata, and then will show visitors where the search words were spoken in a given video. This will help visitors jump right to the parts that are relevant to their needs, instead of having (for example) to watch an entire two-hour video for the relevant five-minute segment.

But perhaps one of the most exciting things for us here is that Mobento is moving beyond YouTube and other platforms in enabling downloading of the videos through their Android app. So the next time we run our mHealth class and a student asks us how they’re supposed to use the relevant point-of-care video content while out in the field without an internet connection, we’ll have an answer ready.

If you’re interested in searching inside our content, head on over to Mobento and check out TechChange on the Global Health Channel.

Are you interested in learning with TechChange? Check out our next class on Mobile Phones for Public Health. Class starts June 3. Apply now!

This piece has been crossposted from Health Unbound. If you’re interested in learning more, please visit our course page on mHealth: Mobile Phones for Public Health.

On November 14th the Mobile Phones for Global Health Online Certificate course officially kicks off and as we head into the final countdown we are offering a special preview of what participants can expect from the four-week course!

With 75 feedback survey s completed (thank you to all those who participated) we identified some of the most well-known thought leaders in the field speaking throughout the course. 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 agenda will include:

Weekly Course Topics:

Week 1: Introduction to Mobile Health
Week 2: Strengthening health systems
Week 3: Moving towards citizen-centered health
Week 4: Technology Standards & Interoperability and Learning from other mServices

Featured Speakers:
Patty Mechael, Executive Director of the mHealth Alliance will provide students with an engaging introduction to the field, discussing the evolution of mobile phones for international health, and how these technologies are being used to today to respond to some of the greatest global health challenges.

Kicking off week 2, Joel Selanikio, co-founder of DataDyne, will present on the development of Episurveyor, and how mobile phones are being used to collect, manage, and sort data.

Also in week two, the class will be joined by Isaac Holeman, Chief Strategist for Medic Mobile, who will engage with students on the range of open source applications in the Medic Mobile toolkit – including the well-known Frontline SMS system that allows computers to send messages to large groups of people at a low cost.

A number of other guest speakers and presenters will also be featured. Stay tuned as we get closer by checking the course landing page.

In addition to these guest speakers, participants will engage with case studies, multimedia tutorials, interactive exercises, and live demonstrations of such tools as interactive voice recognition (IVR), SMS (text message) communication programs, smartphone applications, and health information systems for data collection and management. Through this combination of hands-on experience, and engagement with practitioners on the ground, the goal is to provide students with an in-depth introduction to the field of mHealth.

Participate in the Live Twitter Chat and YOU Could Win 2 Free Passes!

Leading up the course, the mHealth Alliance and TechChange will provide an opportinity to for individuals to win a free pass to enroll in the course! Together TechChange and the mHealth Alliance will host a live-Twitter chat from @techchange and @mHealthAlliance using #tc309 on Friday, October 26 at 1pm EDT.

During the chat we will engage all participants in a variety of discussion topic and questions related to mHealth. We’re eager to hear from you about questions that you may have on latest innovations and projects in the field. All participants in the twitter chat will be included in a drawing to win a free seat in our upcoming course: mHealth Mobile Phones for Public Health. We will give a away a total of 2 seats. More details to come but tweet at @techchange or @mHealthAlliance if you have questions, and we look forward to having you join us there!