4,089 research outputs found

    The effectiveness of mHealth interventions for maternal, newborn and child health in low- and middle-income countries:Protocol for a systematic review and meta-analysis

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    Rates of maternal, newborn and child (MNCH) mortality and morbidity are vastly greater in low– than in high–income countries and represent a major source of global health inequity. A host of systemic, economic, geopolitical and sociocultural factors have been implicated. Mobile information and communication technologies hold potential to ameliorate several of these challenges by supporting coordinated and evidence–based care, facilitating community based health services and enabling citizens to access health information and support. mHealth has attracted considerable attention as a means of supporting maternal, newborn and child health in developing countries and research to assess the impacts of mHealth interventions is increasing. While a number of expert reviews have attempted to summarise this literature, there remains a need for a fully systematic review employing gold standard methods of evidence capture, critical appraisal and meta–analysis, in order to comprehensively map, quality assess and synthesise this body of knowledge

    Mobile-Bayesian Diagnostic System for Childhood Infectious Diseases

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    About 5.9 million children under the age of 5 died in 2015, Preterm birth, delivery complications and infections source a great number of neonatal deaths. the Sustainable Development goals (SDGs) 3.2 is to end preventable deaths of newborns and children under 5 years of age, with a target to reduce neonatal mortality to at least 12 per 1,000 live births and under-5 mortality to at least as low as 25 per 1,000 live births in all countries. However quality and accessible healthcare service is essential to achieve this goal whereas most undeveloped and developing countries still have poor access to quality healthcare. with the emergences on mobile computing and telemedicine, this work provide diagnostics alternative for childhood infectious diseases using Naïve Bayesian classier which has been proven to be efficient in handling uncertainty as regards learning of incomplete data. In this research, sample data was collected from hospitals to model a pediatric system using Naïve Bayes classifier, which produce a 70% accuracy level suitable for a decision support system. The model was also integrated into a SMS platform to enable ease of usage

    Private Enterprise for Public Health: Opportunities for Business to Improve Women's and Children's Health

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    This guide, developed by FSG and published by the Innovation Working Group in support of the global Every Woman, Every Child effort, explores how companies can create shared value in women's and children's health. The document sets out opportunities for multiple different industries to develop new product and services, improve delivery systems and strengthen health systems that can support global efforts to save 16 million women's and children's lives between now and 2015. It particularly notes that companies need not wait for health services to "catch up" with their economic model, but rather they can work proactively to help accelerate change, by partnering with other industries, civil society and the public sector to create collective impact in a specific location. The aim of the guide is to catalyze these transformative partnerships

    The role of m-health in providing antenatal care in rural areas

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    Background: The maternal mortality rate is high in India and many deaths are due to preventable causes related to pregnancy. Mobile-health is an innovative strategy wherein, mobile phones are used for pregnancy tracking and giving support during the antenatal period. Aims and objectives of the study was to know the role of m-Health in providing antenatal care in rural areas.Methods: This was a prospective, comparative study carried out at Kamineni Hospital, LB Nagar, Hyderabad and the Primary Health Centres (PHC) of Uppal and Narapally, Ranga Reddy district over a period of one year nine months and consisted of 204 registered antenatal cases divided into study and control groups. Both groups received routine antenatal support and the study group, in addition received mobile health support also. Various parameters were compared in both the groups.Results: The study group had more antenatal visits, better correction of anemia, less number of patients who were lost to follow-up, and more number of Caesarean deliveries.Conclusions: Mobile health helps in pregnancy tracking and increasing the antenatal visits. It helps in timely referrals for high-risk pregnancies in remote areas and it has the potential to provide obstetric care and consultations to both low risk and at-risk women in rural areas where specialist care is not always available

    Paediatric radiology seen from Africa. Part I: providing diagnostic imaging to a young population

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    Article approval pendingPaediatric radiology requires dedicated equipment, specific precautions related to ionising radiation, and specialist knowledge. Developing countries face difficulties in providing adequate imaging services for children. In many African countries, children represent an increasing proportion of the population, and additional challenges follow from extreme living conditions, poverty, lack of parental care, and exposure to tuberculosis, HIV, pneumonia, diarrhoea and violent trauma. Imaging plays a critical role in the treatment of these children, but is expensive and difficult to provide. The World Health Organisation initiatives, of which the World Health Imaging System for Radiography (WHIS-RAD) unit is one result, needs to expand into other areas such as the provision of maintenance servicing. New initiatives by groups such as Rotary and the World Health Imaging Alliance to install WHIS-RAD units in developing countries and provide digital solutions, need support. Paediatric radiologists are needed to offer their services for reporting, consultation and quality assurance for free by way of teleradiology. Societies for paediatric radiology are needed to focus on providing a volunteer teleradiology reporting group, information on child safety for basic imaging, guidelines for investigations specific to the disease spectrum, and solutions for optimising imaging in children

    Zero Mothers Die: A Global Project to Reduce Maternal and Newborn Mortality through the Systematic Application of Mobile Health and ICTs

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    With almost 300,000 women and six million children under-five continuing to die each year, it is imperative that we start applying the innovation and progress made in the private sector to reducing these unacceptably high mortality rates in developing nations. Launched in September 2014 at the United Nations Headquarters during the Women Leaders Forum, Zero Mothers Die is a unique global public-private partnership to systematically deploy mobile technology and ICT solutions to reduce maternal and newborn mortality. Zero Mothers Die seeks to bring mobile health solutions to pregnant women to increase their access to healthy pregnancy information and emergency care, as well as empower healthcare workers through capacity-building in the area of maternal, newborn and child health. The aim of Zero Mothers Die is to facilitate the delivery of innovation and low-resource technology for healthcare into nations where maternal and child mortality rates remain high, by constantly updating the Zero Mothers Die project model components and supporting countries in convening local public-private partnerships to implement Zero Mothers Die initiatives in their country

    Assessing the impact of mHealth interventions in low- and middle-income countries – what has been shown to work?

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    PKBackground: Low-cost mobile devices, such as mobile phones, tablets, and personal digital assistants, which can access voice and data services, have revolutionised access to information and communication technology worldwide. These devices have a major impact on many aspects of people’s lives, from business and education to health. This paper reviews the current evidence on the specific impacts of mobile technologies on tangible health outcomes (mHealth) in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), from the perspectives of various stakeholders. Design: Comprehensive literature searches were undertaken using key medical subject heading search terms on PubMed, Google Scholar, and grey literature sources. Analysis of 676 publications retrieved from the search was undertaken based on key inclusion criteria, resulting in a set of 76 papers for detailed review. The impacts of mHealth interventions reported in these papers were categorised into common mHealth applications. Results: There is a growing evidence base for the efficacy of mHealth interventions in LMICs, particularly in improving treatment adherence, appointment compliance, data gathering, and developing support networks for health workers. However, the quantity and quality of the evidence is still limited in many respects. Conclusions: Over all application areas, there remains a need to take small pilot studies to full scale, enabling more rigorous experimental and quasi-experimental studies to be undertaken in order to strengthen the evidence base

    A systematic review of digital health tools used for decision support by frontline health workers (FLHWs) in low- and middle- income countries (LMICs)

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    In in low-and middle-income countries (LMIC), where there are very few trained physicians and nurses, community health workers (CHWs) are often the only providers of healthcare to millions of people. Such LMIC are countries that are classified, based on their geographic region and Gross National Income (GNI), as low-middle income by the World Bank Group, the worlds largest development bank. Research has shown digital health tools to be an effective strategy to improve the performance of frontline line health workers. The aim of this review was to systematically examine the literature on digital health tools that are used for decision support in LMIC and describe what we can learn from studies that have used these tools. As part of a larger parent study the following databases were searched: PubMed, Embase, Scopus, CINAHL, Global Health Ovid, Cochrane and Global Idex Medicus, to find ariticles in the following domains: training tools, decision support, data capture, commodity tracking, provider to provider communication, provider to patient communication and alerts, reminders, health information content. These domains were selected based on the World Health Organisation (WHO) framework for classifying digital health interventions. Content from all seven of these domains informed a series of reviews however this review focuses on how digital tools are used to provide decision support to FLHWs. Included studies were conducted in LMIC in Africa, Asia, North America and South America with the most common users of the tools being CHWs. Most tools for FLHW decision-support used in the interventions described in included articles were in either the pilot or prototype phases, and offered maternal and child health care services. Although decision support was the primary digital health function of all these studies, there was considerable variation in the number of digital health functions of each tool with most studies reporting decision support and data capture as their primary and secondary functions respectively. All the studies found their intervention to have beneficial effects on one or more of the following outcomes: beneficiary engagement, provider engagement, health effects and process/outputs. These findings show great potential for the use of decision support digital health tools as a means of improving the outcomes of health systems through; reducing the work load of FLHWs, reducing the costs of health care, improving the efficiency of service delivery and/or improving the overall quality of care

    Value of mHealth Apps for Maternal Healthcare Service Delivery

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    The growing interest in using mHealth to increase access to maternal healthcare can be understood through the context of value co-creation. The value of mHealth apps is co-created with multiple actors, always including the beneficiary. Service dominant (S-D) logic conceptualizes value as value-in-context in which actors co-create and realize value differently in different channels and their experiences may shift over time. It is unclear of what value is co-created with the use of mHealth apps in maternal healthcare from an S-D perspective. In this paper, a case study approach is used to investigate use of two mHealth apps in Uganda. Interviews and focus group discussions were held with app users. Results were analyzed using S-D value co-creation model. Key findings show that mHealth has been used to co-create value beyond maternal healthcare to individuals. Value that is co-created includes adherence to antenatal care (ANC), skilled attendance at birth, improved resource planning and service delivery, prevention of complications, knowledge acquisition and sharing. Individual value includes improved productivity, knowledge, decision making and wellbeing. Further investigations on individuals’ preferences of apps that trigger their active participation, value to family and friends and challenges faced when using mHealth apps to co-create value are suggested

    Strengthening Primary Health Care Through Community Health Workers: Investment Case And Financing Recommendations

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    A report released this week at the Third International Conference on Financing for Development found that there is a strong case for investing in Community Health Worker (CHW) programs as part of integrated health systems. The report was released by leaders from the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, the Republic of Liberia, the U.N. Secretary General's Special Envoy for Financing the Health MDGs and for Malaria, Partners in Health, the Clinton Foundation, the African Leaders Malaria Alliance, and the MDG Health Alliance. The authors encourage domestic governments, international financers, bilateral and multilateral donors, and the broader global health community to finance and support the scale up of CHW programs as part of community-based primary health care through a set of specific recommendations. The authors participated in the crafting of the report and its recommendations as part of a distinguished panel chaired by Ray Chambers, the UN Secretary General's Special Envoy for Financing the Health MDGs and for Malaria, and Prime Minister Hailemariam Dessalegn, President of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia
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