Agriculture – Page 24

An iPhone app for solid waste management?

AnyJunk, an on-demand rubbish clearance firm in the UK, launched the first iPhone app for waste collection earlier this month. The solid waste management innovation allows users to record videos of their garbage and specify when they want it collected. “The app then automatically picks up their location through the iPhone’s GPS and send an email request to AnyJunk to quote for the clearance.”

Jason Mohr, founder of the cutting-edge waste disposal company, says “the big attraction of the app is it allows customers to get a much more precise quote without having to wait for a truck team to visit in person beforehand.”

The user-friendly app boasts a welcome screen with a button that once touched will enable the recording of a video of your garbage; users are then allowed to select convenient collection times. The more flexible the garbage collection request, the cheaper the service will be.

Despite its efficiency and flexible cost structure, which augurs well for its sustainability, this innovation’s potency, with respect to waste management, is limited to contexts where smart-phones are readily available and public services are high on the agenda.

Learn more about the ‘Junk Removal’ app.

July 25, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Health, Health, Humanitarian Assistance, Infectious Diseases, Mobile, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Tweets track down dengue fever in Brazil

Photo Credit: chinaview.cn

A research group led by scientists in Brazil has developed software that tracks outbreaks of dengue fever using the social media outlet twitter. This software was created thanks to coordination between two Brazilian National Institutes of Science and Technology, led by Wagner Meira, a computer scientist at the Federal University of Minas Gerais.

The software is designed to detect the word “dengue” in tweets and information about the sender’s location. The software analyzes the sentence structure and wording to determine if tweets are appropriate for dengue surveillance. Tweets that are deemed spurious or unrelated to dengue fever are filtered out.

During the testing phase, the researchers examined 2,447 tweets about dengue fever sent through the social networking portal between January and May 2009. They found a strong correlation between personal experience tweets about dengue and official data on outbreaks from the Brazilian Ministry of Health.

The research team now plans to analyze 181,845 tweets sent between December 2010 and April 2011, but are waiting for the ministry’s 2011 data before they do so. They also plan to incorporate other key words, mostly symptoms of dengue fever, into their detection scheme to gather more tweets.

Photo Credit: Twitter

This is the first time social media has been used for dengue fever surveillance, but it is not the first time social media has been used for real-time epidemic surveillance. Twitter was used to follow the 2009 swine flu pandemic. Furthermore, it is the first attempt to gather information on people tweeting about their personal experience of a disease.

Google also introduced Google Dengue Trends last month, which records spikes in web searches for dengue fever. Therefore, using social media for surveillance is not a new practice, and nor is tracking dengue using technology. However, Meira’s method is an innovative and efficient way to track dengue fever.

Dengue fever, which can cause hemorrhagic deaths, plagues Brazil ever year. Moreover, every year it emerges in different locations than before. Most Brazilians know how to control and even eradicate the disease, but the majority of citizens don’t take any precautions against it.

On top of that, outbreak notifications take several weeks to process and analyze which impedes officials from assisting citizens. Using Twitter messages could mean a much faster response, says Meira. “It isn’t predicting the future but the present,” he says. “This means we aren’t weeks behind like we used to be.”

July 25, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Food Security, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

A communications toolkit for food security pros?

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) launched a comprehensive food security communications toolkit this week. The kit will help food security professionals to better communicate their knowledge.

The kit will offer lessons on the follow:

Communicating strategically with policy makers – for maximum impact
Dealing with the media and building good relationships with journalists
How to prepare a communication strategy
Exploiting the internet, social media and Web 2.0 technologies to deliver your message and engage in dialogues with global audiences
Writing policy briefs, early warning bulletins, needs assessment and research reports
Improving your writing skills and editing your work

Michael Riggs, a blogger on e-agriculture, says the toolkit includes readymade templates complemented by a flexible e-learning course on food security communications.

Here’s the Food Security Communications Toolkit.

Here’s the e-learning course

July 22, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Mobile, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

The farmers with Androids…

Credit: Heather Thorne/Grameen Foundation

The Seattle-based Grameen Foundation Center launched a comprehensive Android phone-based project for Ugandan farmers recently, that could significantly improve farming processes, but sustainable is the initiate.

The project is a high-tech response to fundamental challenges in agriculture, including unclear pricing structures and markets, unreliable weather forecasts, and a myriad of inefficient/ absent extension services about when and how to plant crops. Each Android phone has an open-source data-collection app that feeds into a system called Salesforce. The Grameen innovation counters the electrical challenges in the East-African country, that would otherwise doom projects dependent on electrical power, by utilizing rechargeable batteries which solar energy can sustain.

The project is organized around 400 select farmers, known as ‘community knowledge workers’, who own Android phones—and 3 in 4 of all their peers value their high-tech extension services. But an Android phone costs US$600 plus upkeep costs, nearly twice the per capita income in Uganda. So, how do these smart phone owning farmers acquire them legitimately? The project offers select farmers loans to purchase the phones. On the surface, this approach suggests a level of sustainability, but I have a few reservations.

First, are the benefits of using a smart phone, compared to a regular phone, so great that a farmer ought to take a loan and bear upkeep costs (combined) twice his/her country’s per capita income simply to access information? Of course, information is important, but it is only one variable among many that must be resolved to result in improved earnings for the farmers. Second, even if in the long-term ‘community knowledge workers’ charge for the services they offer, and even pay a fee to the platform providers, how long will it be before they can recoup and repay their loans? What is the interest rate on these ‘Android loans’? These are critical questions that ought to be answered in order for us to truly grapple with the potential economic impact of deploying this sophisticated technology

July 21, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Health, Health, Health Systems, Mobile, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

How is coordination possible in mHealth? Experts gather and discuss

The mHealth Working Group, a collaborative forum created in 2009 by K4Health, held a meeting yesterday that focused on the “Coordination of mHealth projects within and between organizations in the field.” The meeting brought together many experts from the field of mHealth in a meeting that was ripe with rich discussion and promising potential going forward in the field.

Representatives at the meeting came from a number of organizations including USAID, K4Health, John Snow Inc. (JSI), mHealth Alliance, and the UN foundation, just to name a few. Therefore, the meeting focused on mHealth implementation in the developing world rather than here at home where mHealth is much more sophisticated.

The overarching theme for the meeting was examining how to promote coordination amongst organizations that are active in mHealth. This is an important issue because of the lack of large scale mHealth efforts programs in the developing world and the dire lack of monitoring in existing mHealth programs.

The discussion began with the current status and perception of mHealth programs in the developing world. Michael Frost, an official from JSI, stated that mHealth is “exploding with a lot of new interest” but “needs to mature a little bit.” He also echoed claims found in the latest mHealth report, that “projects have a narrow focus, and they don’t have strong evaluation principles.”

Photo Credit: USAID

John Novak from USAID discussed the importance of external collaboration and USAID’s current efforts in structuring their standards for doing so. One of his take home messages here was that all parties involved with implementing mHealth projects, including the country government, ministry of Health, telecoms, NGO’s and medical professionals on the ground need to convene and join hands before implementing a project. One suggested way to accomplish this is creating “coordination groups” at the international and country levels that serve to bring the relevant players to the table.

Discussions about the mHealth Summit that took place early last month in Cape Town also surfaced. One presenter mentioned a case study in Bangladesh that highlighted the fruitful impact of government taking control of the telecom industry to implement mHealth initiatives at no cost to citizens. The presenter expressed that governments need to take more active roles in coordinating programs; it is an effective way to get programs rolled out.

Photo Credit: Hub

The meeting produced more than lectures and discussions. Two mHealth resources were presented that are designed to make the process of collaboration and coordinating easier. Frost from JSI discussed their mHealth center whose primary roles are to create mHealth initiatives and assist existing ones by improving communication and information sharing methods within them. The mHealth alliance introduced a new knowledge resource website called Health Unbound (Hub) that aims to bring different stakeholders together to share, collect and produce information on the intersection of technology and health. Hub is planned to be unveiled to the public in about a month.

The core discussion never strayed away from the importance of coordination amongst organizations involved with mHealth initiatives. Nearly everyone seemed to agree that coordination in vital, and all parties involved in the process of creating mHealth programs must be represented in the planning process.

So the next question to ask is, how do you manage to get everyone to the table given each country has a distinct political and economic climate? How do you mediate between governments that want power, telecoms that want money and NGO’s that have ambitious goals? The answer, I learned, is multifaceted. Nonetheless I will attempt to discuss them over the next few posts with the information provided at the meeting. And even better, the answers will continue to be discussed over the next round of mHealth Working Group meetings.

July 21, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Mobile, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Mobile payments in the Philippines: Future Opportunities for Growth

The following is a guest post we’re pleased to share by Salah Goss and Clara Veniard from the FSP program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Access CEED Store We often hear that M-PESA was able to scale quickly because it targeted an unmet need: urban to rural remittances. Safaricom based the initial launch of the M-PESA service on the ‘send money home’ proposition because a large proportion of split families in Kenya needed a way to send money to relatives in rural areas but had few ideal options to do so.

In many markets, however, such a clear unmet need does not exist.

The Philippines is a prime example of this. Even though mobile money providers have been in the market for over ten years, they have struggled to gain market share in the face of well known and well established payment providers. Knowledge and usage of mobile money services are low with less than 4% of users of all payment service providers reporting usage of mobile money services and awareness of four mobile money products ranging between 28% and 46%, even though more than 70% of users have access to a cell phone

Our study focuses on the demand side of domestic payment services: bill payments and money transfers

In 2010, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation launched a study with Bankable Frontier Associates to understand the demand for domestic payment services in the Philippines and to identify potential opportunities and unmet needs for mobile money providers to target. The study found the Philippines is an active and mature payment market, with a myriad of payment providers, including payment centers, banks and pawn shops to choose from. Only 28% of respondents reporting they make no payments and most Filipinos are aware of and using multiple service providers.

In our study, we focused on three primary types of domestic remote transactions mobile money has the potential to target: bill payment, money transfers, and loan payments. Bill payments are most common and are used by 55% of the population. They are followed by transfers (used by 33% of the population), and loan payments (used by 16% of the population). We did not explore access to financial services, although 29% of respondents claim to be saving at home or in banks, or other potential drivers of mobile money that have had success in other countries, such as public transportation and online purchases.

In this paper we use the results from the study to explore five alternative and almost equally used channels for bill payments or money transfers. Pawnshops are the preferred channel for money transfers, with 29% of Filipinos citing the leading pawnshops (M Lhuillier and LBC) as the main payment service provider in the last twelve months. Payment centers are used to pay bills by 21% of Filipinos while bank transfers are the prefer method for 17% of Filipinos for both money transfers and bill payment. Informal transfer options are the primary method for money transfers and bill payment for 15% of Filipinos. Alternatively, 13% of Filipinos pay their bills directly or are direct payers.

Existing payment channels are good but far from perfect

In order for mobile money to take off in competitive markets like the Philippines, providers will not only need to identify a high potential target opportunity, but also ensure their ability to effectively serve the market’s needs relative to the competition. We have identified user pain points in the following areas when paying a bill or conducting a money transfer: speed of delivery, trust and reliability, price, and customer service. Consumers in the Philippines have access to a number of channels that may provide either speed, trust or good customer service but none of them is ideal, leaving room for a service that gives customers more of what they value.

For bill payments, customers can pay in a bank or payment center. Both options have their short comings: although banks are trusted (especially with large amounts), they suffer from long queues, unfriendly and limited staff. Payment centers are cheap and closer to home than a biller’s office, but also suffer from long queues and delays to credit customer payments at the biller. In addition, neither banks nor payment centers are widely accessible, especially in rural areas. In fact, 32% of users reported they would be willing to pay PhP 50 (US$1.50) for bill payment services that do not require them to leave their home.

For money transfers, customers have the option of using banks,” big brand” money transfer services, pawnshops or informal channels. Pawnshops are the most popular given their ubiquity, trusted brand and speed (if picked up at the pawnshop) but the most popular pawnshops, M Lhuillier and Cebuana, are not completely customer friendly. M Lhuillier has long queues, strict verification and unsafe locations and Cebuana has high fees. The larger transfer companies like Western Union and LBC have high attrition rates due to high fees and other problems. LBC, for example, offers door-to-door service, but it can be slow and their customers complain that their neighbors know when money is delivered. Consumers also complain about the stigma of entering pawnshops. Banks offer security, privacy and trust for larger transfers, but are not always accessible.

Although alternative channels are not perfect, mobile payment providers find it difficult to convince consumers to try a mobile payment service as evidenced by low usage figures (4%) compared to other payment options. According to our study, users of one type of payment providers tend to be sticky. Our survey conducted among users of payment services found that fewer than 10% of one-time users have stopped using a service. They also tend to think their payment service is the best, providing high scores on trust, convenience, speed, security, fees and customer service. Users say they would utilize a new payment service in addition to their current service, rather than in lieu of it.

Some segments are still not served by formal providers

Mobile payment providers also have an opportunity to target market segments not served by formal providers such as personal direct payers and users of informal service providers.

33% of the population still pays for their bills and loans directly at the biller’s office, and do not use other intermediaries such as banks or payment centers. The vast majority of personal direct payers (75%) indicate that they trust only themselves to deliver payments, although 57% agreed that paying bills would be easier to do via a third party. Perhaps by tackling the issue of trust, mobile money operators can convince these potential customers, who tend to be male, to try their services for the convenience they can offer.

Users of informal service providers may also be a potential market niche. 25% of all users use informal service providers on a regular basis for smaller, regular transactions. These users tend to be rural and poor women who generally make bill and loan payments intra-island. In fact, these users in rural areas rarely pay bills or loans through formal service providers, and when they do, they use the leading pawnshop. Although informal options are low cost, they suffer from delays, the sender has no automated confirmation of when the money arrives, funds can be stolen, and unanticipated costs may arise (such as tips or paying for food or petrol of the deliverer). Similar to a country that does not have many formal payment options, such as Kenya pre-MPESA, providing an alternative to the existing options can meet a need that resonate strongly.

Lower value transfers are an untapped opportunity

Mobile payment providers may also have an opportunity to facilitate lower value transfers between family and friends that occur informally and that higher cost channels (including pawnshops) cannot profitably serve. Our study found that 52% of Filipinos receive money from friends and family (either as a loan or a remittance) in the event that they need to make a purchase or pay a bill but do not have enough money. The rest seek money from alternative sources: 15% will do something to earn the money themselves, 12% will wait for their salary and 10% will go to an ATM to withdraw cash. Filipinos also regularly send or receive money, for emergencies, daily household expenses, education, bill payment, or business expenses. Sweeping these low value transactions through mobile money services would mean a significant increase in their volume of transactions as well as customers. In addition, 33% of all users said if they could make cross payments between mobile money schemes, then they might find this persuasive enough to try them.

Next steps for mobile money providers

During the last ten years, mobile money providers in the Philippines have struggled to gain traction in the market. They compete against an active payment market with numerous strong alternative channels for bill payments and money transfers. However, these alternatives are far from ideal, according to customers themselves, and niches exist in the payments market that have not been targeted.

Mobile money providers have an opportunity to attract customers away from existing payment options, persuade customers to use their services in addition to their current payment provider or to target segments that are not currently served by formal payment providers, such as personal direct payers and users of informal service providers. In addition, they may have an opportunity to capture lower value transfers.. The challenge faced by mobile money will be to encourage customers to try their service and to convince them through early trials of the superior value of the service. The extent to which they will succeed in doing so will depend on the investment mobile operators are willing to make in strategic marketing, getting their fee structures right and creative partnerships with banks and others that may add value to the customer experience.

You can download the full report from the BFA website.

July 21, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Health, Health, Health Systems, Mobile, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

ICT’s in Health: A Crash Course

The world of ICT is expanding into the health sector, and their interactions are garnering more and more attention by the day. Therefore, we must be mindful of the beginnings and demarcations of ICT usage in health. After all, we can’t know where we are going unless we know where we came from.

Current ICT for health news in the developing world is dominated by initiatives using mobile telephony; the bread and butter of mHealth. This is not a total shock since over 85% of the world now has mobile coverage. Moreover, there are over 5 billion people on Earth with a mobile phone, and 3.5 billion of them are in developing countries. As a result, mHealth initiatives are booming in developing countries, especially in Africa and South Asia.

But what about other forms of ICTs that play a role in healthcare? What are they and how do they work? This crash course on the intersection between ICT and Health will explore the different avenues within that intersection and how to distinguish them from one another to prevent confusion.

Avenues of ICT and Health

Avenues are the different types of structured practices that implement ICTs in the health field. An avenue in the intersection of ICT and health will utilize old technologies, new technologies or a convergence of both in a structured and systematic way to achieve positive health outcomes. These are the different avenues:

eHealth: The term eHealth refers to the practice of using and being supported by electronics in healthcare. eHealth is the umbrella concept for many other avenues of ICT and health such as telemedicine and mHealth. The term is interchangeably used with health informatics by some experts. The term characterizes a way of thinking, an attitude, and a commitment for networked, global thinking, to improve health care locally, regionally, and worldwide by using information and communication technology. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), eHealth is the quintessential embodiment of the intersection of ICTs and health. Electronic health record systems, health information systems, mHealth and telemedicine all fall under the jurisdiction of eHealth.

Telemedicine: Technically, telemedicine has been around for decades, ever since doctors on one end of the phone have consulted patients on the other end of the phone. It pertains to providing remote clinical care through forms of telecommunication and information technologies. What distinguishes telemedicine from telehealth, since they are sometimes incorrectly used interchangeably, is that the former delivers clinical care while the latter offers clinical and non-clinical care such as health research and education. Telemedicine services include live patient consultation over phone or video, remote patient monitoring, medical and health information acquisition, and emergency telemedicine.

mHealth: Also called mobile health, mHealth is a form of eHealth that uses mobile devices such as mobile phones and PDA’s for health services. The Global Observatory for eHealth (GOe) defined mHealth as medical and public health practice supported by mobile devices, such as mobile phones, patient monitoring devices, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and other wireless devices. mHealth capitalizes on mobile telecommunication services such as SMS, general packet radio service (GPRS), third and fourth generation mobile telecommunications (3G and 4G systems), global positioning system (GPS), and Bluetooth technology.

Health Informatics: This is the field that aims to analyze the information needs of consumers, implement ways to disperse information to consumers and health professionals, and integrate consumer preferences into medical information systems. The field uses devices, resources and methods to store, obtain, retrieve, and disseminate information for healthcare purposes. Health informatics mostly uses computers but also takes advantage of clinical guidelines, advanced medical devices, and ICT services.

July 19, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

CellBazaar: The market’s in your hand!

Think, an international nonprofit think-tank focused on circulating digital technologies for development, launched a glitzy mobile innovation, CellBazaar, aimed at improving agriculture in Bangladesh, with the tag-line “the market in your mobile phone”.

Credit: CellBazaar

Over a million people have signed-up and upwards of 250 million regularly use it.

CellBazaar is touted as a virtual marketplace, for GrameenPhone’s 20 million mobile subscribers, where demand and supply are brought together. This is important to the extent that market prices are commonly debased by poor transport infrastructure that increases costs.

To use CellBazaar, adopters will post the produce they wish to sell via a mobile phone, which will be fed into an online platform. The mobile element is important as internet penetration in Bangladesh is extremely low, roughly 0.03%. The mobile-enabled technology that powers this innovation also overcomes literacy challenges by utilizing voice messages to read out posts.

By expanding market opportunities for traders and farmers , CellBazaar will allow previously marginalized agricultural enterprises to flourish: earning larger profits and selling in bulk from a more advantageous position due to reduced costs.

While this technology tackles marketing, a major challenge to farmers around the globe, there are many other elements within the agricultural sector that ought to be improved to ensure sustained development and food security: harvesting, packaging, storing, and transporting. In a subsequent article, I will examine these issues as I take an in depth look at the food crisis currently crippling parts of the Horn of Africa.

CellBazaar is slated to expand to developing markets similar to Bangladesh, particularly East Africa and South Asia.

Learn more about CellBazaar here.

July 18, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Health, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Mapping for Informed Decision Making in Rwanda

Mapping and Geographic Information System (GIS) have long been used in Rwanda for sectors such as agriculture and economic growth. The need for these innovative tools and skills, however, are just now being recognized in other fields, including health. As a monitoring and evaluation expert, I have seen how useful geography and maps can be to monitor and improve programs, and I was interested to learn more about how they were being used and enhanced in the field.

For four days, I joined 18 public health professionals at a GIS training in Kigali, Rwanda, organized by MEASURE Evaluation and Monitoring and Evaluation Management Systems (MEMS) and supported by USAID in collaboration with National AIDS Control Commission (CNLS ). The participants represented many local Rwandan organizations such as MEMS, the Ministry of Health, the Center for Treatment and Research on AIDS, Malaria, Tuberculosis and Other Epidemics (TRAC Plus), and National University of Rwanda’s School of Public Health.

Andrew Inglis and training participants use qGIS and local data to produce maps that can be used for monitoring HIV programs.

GIS is a unique tool that allows people to interact with their data. Rather than comparing data in charts or graphs, mapping data through geography allows data users to identify essential trends and associations that may not be apparent in other formats. By building local capacity in GIS, we are expanding “evidence-based decision making” for high quality and strategic health programs.

There was a lot of enthusiasm during the training about GIS. The training provided an excellent forum for the participants to talk about innovative ways they are already using the GIS tool. Participants discussed plans to create new programs that would allow for better ownership and monitoring, to improve supply chain management, and to integrate services, all things that will support and enhance the projects that USAID and its partners are implementing.

MEASURE Evaluation trainers, Andrew Inglis and Clara Burgert, introduced the concept of GIS maps and their ability to link to a database that is capable of capturing, storing, querying, analyzing, displaying and outputting data. In addition to teaching concepts such as how to interpret maps and how to effectively use spatial data, the training provided participants an excellent opportunity to gain practical experience.

Prior to the training, data was collected from each of the representing organizations so they could to make a map during the training and present to the group. All the participants also left with qGIS, an excellent free mapping tool, giving them something to work with as they began to hone their new skills and build their organizational capacity.

Andrew Inglis is a firm believer building capacity through the use of geographic and spatial data for program planning, implementation, monitoring, evaluation and advocacy. He explained, “The goal of capacity building is to turn potential into reality. During the January 2011 stakeholders meeting the potential value of GIS towards evaluation of HIV prevention programs were recognized, however, the lack of capacity within the national institutions is a major barrier. The aim of the capacity building is to start to realize this potential and reduce the capacity barrier to the use of GIS within national institutions.”

After the training, MEASURE Evaluation wrapped up the week with an Open Forum, hosted by the CNLS, inviting participants and other stakeholders to discuss how best to put these newly acquired skills to use. The goal was to create linkages between the HIV/AIDS and health sectors (and other related sectors) and to promote the sharing and use of data linked to geography in Rwanda. It was energizing to be there, discussing with Rwandan colleagues how they can use GIS and mapping tools to connect better with each other, improve the way they plan, implement and monitor health services, and ultimately improve the health outcomes in their country.

As Solomon Kununka, Management Information Systems Specialist from MEMS, put it, “This has initiated me into the GIS community. Now I want even more training. But, I have the basics. I can make maps for my supervisor and me, to be used for decision making.”

July 18, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Family Planning, Health, Health, Maternal & Child Health, Mobile, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Delivering babies in Ghana just got a little easier

Pregnant woman on phone. Photo Credit: MOTECH

A new mobile phone service was recently launched in Ghana that provides free access to health information in ensuring safe pregnancies. The service, aptly named Mobile Midwife, offers text or voice messaging on maternal health to pregnant women.

Mobile Midwife was developed as part of the U.S. based Grameen Foundation’s MOTECH Ghana initiative, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. It is just one more result of rising donor attention to mHealth services. Its creation continues a trend of mHealth initiatives being churned out in Africa.

Educating women and making them aware of the maternal health risks associated with pregnancies are the cornerstone goals of the service. To make it convenient for the user, the service comes in several different languages, and is presented by text or voice via mobile phones. Additionally, the messages are time specific concurring with the woman’s stage of pregnancy.

When a pregnant woman registers for the service, they are asked to give the expected due date for delivery of the unborn child and their location. Then, periodically, the woman receives messages informing when appointments are due or overdue to remind them to visit the health clinic for check-ups.

The users also get reminders for specific treatments, information about milestones in fetal development, nutrition facts, tips on the benefits of breastfeeding and other pregnancy-related and prenatal health information. It also provides information that demystifies local pregnancy myths and helps users overcome the widespread fear of visiting doctors or health clinics.

MOTECH also rolled out a similar mobile health service earlier in the year that enables nurses in rural Ghanaian health facilities to automate much of their record keeping and reporting, which formerly took 4-6 days per month. The service is in the form of a java–based mobile phone application.

Both Mobile Midwife and the application mentioned above have made life easier for everyone involved in the process of delivering a baby.

One Ghanaian mother said to Grameen, “I would like to advise my pregnant friends to go to the hospital to enroll into MOTECH, to listen to the messages and also to practice what is said because it helps a lot…I used to be scared about pregnancy but now with the messages I am no longer scared and it has taken away my worries and that we feel ok and then the pregnancy is ok.”

This service is extremely pertinent since Africa exhibits some of the worst maternal health records in the world. Fourteen of the fifteen countries with the highest rates of maternal mortality in the world are in Africa. Furthermore, African countries are far behind in meeting Millennium Development Goals set for 2015; especially for those associated with maternal health. Perhaps services like this can lend a helping hand.

July 18, 2011/by actualize

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