Health Sector Reform : The Case for mHealth

Rapid adoption of mobile telephony in rural India has prompted the social sector to exploit mobile communication as a dependable and effective ICT media. Intervention studies and projects in low resource settings of developing countries have underlined multiple roles and effectiveness of mobile communications in the health sector. In particular, the delivery function of public health programs can be improved by using prompts and reminders through SMS and voice calls for the health workers. In the state of Orissa in India, for example, mobile videos were instrumental in improving the quality of counselling among the community health workers. Improvement in quality and timeliness of data can help the health system dynamically manage the delivery and promotion functions. Despite these promises, certain technological and programmatic challenges impede the adoption of mHealth across the health system