Mobile health information system: Providing access to information for health care professionals in South Africa

The burden of the HIV /AIDS epidemic and an acute shortage of health care professionals exact a heavy toll on the delivery of health care in South Africa. Compounding this problem, health workers in rural and semi-urban facilities have little access to clinical and public health information that is relevant for improving their practice. Treatment guidelines and other medical resources are provided to health facilities in hard copies. More often than not, however, the number of copies provided is insufficient for the number of health workers. Updating treatment guidelines, procedures, and processes incurs huge printing and transportation costs. Disseminating updates to remote health facilities requires an enormous logistical effort and can take a very long time; meanwhile health workers continue to use outdated guidelines until they receive the updated materials. To address some of these challenges, the Mobile Health Information System (MHIS) project, implemented in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa, explored the feasibility of a new technological health-delivery channel for nurses and doctors at the point of care. The initiative is designed to improve the ability of health workers to care for their patients by providing them with locally relevant health information at the point of care through the deployment of commercially available, Internet-capable smart phones pre-loaded with a Mobile Health Library. Designed to support the delivery of comprehensive patient care, the library includes digitized medical guidelines, protocols, diagnostic tools, drug formularies and other actionable, evidence-based clinical and public health content. An independent study showed that 89% of the nurses using the Mobile Health Library reported an improvement in their ability to provide better services and advice to patients. Based on the success of the pilot testing of the system (2008 -2010), the initiative is now expanding to 18 hospitals and community health centers in the Eastern Cape Province.