CapacityPlus Participates in First mHealth Africa Summit
Yesterday our Dykki Settle, CapacityPlus informatics team lead, joined approximately 80 other stakeholders in Accra, Ghana for the mHealth Africa Summit: The Promise of mHealth in Africa. They are from the health, telecommunication, ICT, finance, academic, and development fields, and are gathered to explore using mobile technology to improveto improve public health, research, and training with education applications and delivery systems in Africa.
As stated on the conference website, most African countries are not on track to meet the UN’s Millennium Development Goals. Therefore the need for innovation has never been greater. With approximately 379 million Africans (over half the population!) using mobile phones, there is an exciting new opportunity to use mobile technology to transform several components of the health delivery system, including:
- Collecting clinical and community health data
- Monitoring patient vital signs in real-time
- Augmenting the direct provision of care by linking health care workers to patients
- Delivering healthcare information to practitioners, researchers, and patients
- Addressing supply chain management problems e.g. pharmaceuticals supply
Earlier today, Dykki presented ‘Atlas of a Changing World: A Taxonomy of mHealth,’ an overview on mHealth architecture and CapacityPlus’ work in mHealth to support health workers.
To learn more, read Dykki’s recent IntraHealth blog on mHealth possibilities here. Also, follow him on twitter @dykki.