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.

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!