Each month, mPowering Frontline Health Workers partners compile the ‘top five’ articles, videos, and resources related to mHealth, global health, and technology for development. This month’s Top Five post comes from the One Million Community Health Workers Campaign, which promotes the effective use of community health workers (CHWs) in achieving universal health coverage, and works to increase knowledge about the importance of CHWs in the post-2015 development agenda.
Here are this month’s top five- we hope you enjoy reading them!
mHealth Support Tools for Improving the Performance of Frontline Health Workers: An Inventory and Analytical Review: The mHealth Alliance presents research findings on the use of mHealth tools by frontline health workers—illustrated by country case studies from Malawi, Senegal, Uganda, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, and Tanzania—along with lessons learned and recommendations on how these tools can be implemented to maximize performance and accountability.
Estimated reading time: 1 hour
Africa’s Tech Edge: How Africa is ahead of the technology curve—especially in regards to mobile banking.
Estimated reading time: 15 minutes
Optimizing Mobile Deployments: This report offers guidelines for using mobile technology for more general grassroots-level work, offering recommendations for maximizing benefit and overcoming constraints to use.
Estimated reading time: 1.5 hours
Systematic review on what works, what does not work and why of implementation of mHealth projects in Africa: An extensive literature review of what works and what doesn’t in mHealth implementation in Africa. The authors include recommendations for future research, such as evaluating cost-effectiveness and the impacts of scaling up mHealth on the overall health system.
Estimated reading time: 1 hour
In search of a few good apps: In the Journal of the American Medicine Association, authors call for the creation of a regulatory body for mHealth applications. The vast majority of mHealth uses remain unregulated and unevaluated, making it difficult to assess usefulness and credibility.
Estimated reading time: 40 minutes
About mPowering: mPowering Frontline Health Workers is a USAID-funded public-private partnership of 16 members working to leverage mobile technology to strengthen the capacity of frontline health workers.