Where There Is No Midwife: Developing a mobile app for Safe Pregnancy and Birth

The burgeoning field of mobile health has proven successful for data collection and centralizing health information, records, and trends. However, little has been done to use the same mobile tools to improve Community Health Worker's (CHWs) access to vital health information. There is huge promise for mHealth to connect people to relevant content, and to empower them to make informed decisions for maternal and child health. As a recognized leader of developing and distributing accessible, trusted Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (MNCH) materials, Hesperian Health Guides is in a unique position to explore how health content can best be designed for mobile devices. In 2011, Hesperian developed a mobile app on Safe Pregnancy and Birth to demonstrate that clear, user-friendly, demystifying health information can be ‘chunked' for this new format. Based on our experiences in MNCH content development, we focused on content and navigation that enables individuals and CHWs to identify danger signs during pregnancy and birth, and the life-saving actions that can be taken. To facilitate sharing of vital health information by CHWs with family members, we focused on content that is clearly written and illustrated, and easy to understand. We are excited to share lessons learned for designing and crafting empowering MNCH content for mobile devices, which will be informative for all organizations working in MNCH and mHealth, and shed light on how to create a more comprehensive communication system that takes advantage of mobile health content delivery.