A World Health Organization report concludes that the world is short 72 million health workers. In just over 20 years, this number is set to double if the situation is not addressed, therefore, it is vitally important to train more healthcare workers at the community level especially in parts of the world like Africa.
AMREF is trying now ways to use mHealth to train health workers in sub-Saharan Africa. Earlier this year, AMREF launched the “Health Enablement and Learning Platform Pilot Project” in Kenya with funding of $1.4 million.
The pilot was established through a public private partnership with the Ministry of Health in Kenya, Accenture, Mezzanine-Vodafone, and the Safaricom Foundation. The project is going to pilot a mobile health learning platform to provide training, continuous learning opportunities, and supervision of community health workers.
In Kenya, mobile technology usage is quickly becoming more popular especially in urban areas but rural areas still have problems utilizing mobile technology at times since internet service is not always available.
Recently in Lwala Kenya, the organization Health eVillages awarded a grant to the Lwala Community Alliance (LCA) to provide comprehensive internet service to improve connectivity between LCA clinicians in rural Kenya.
With this grant, LCA clinicians working in rural communities in Migori County, Kenya, will be able to communicate and consult directly with doctors at the LCA Hospital in Lwala to help them make critical decisions.
LCA treats more than 1,700 people each month with more than 1,000 residents enrolled in HIV/AIDS treatment in an area where the HIV rate is between 16 and 20 percent which is nearly three times the rate of the rest of the country. Due to the threats of HIV, malaria, other infectious diseases, and poor sanitation, life expectancy in the region hovers just above 40 years.
Health eVillages founded by Physicians Interactive in partnership with the not-for-profit Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, provides iPods, iPads, and other handheld devices equipped with specialized references and clinical decision support tools.
Smartphone ownership is skyrocketing in Kenya and it is estimated that 4.3 million high tech phones will be in circulation before the end of the year. To help the people in western Kenya, Medtronic Foundation is funding the development and implementation of a secure, smartphone-based platform to help treat noncommunicable diseases in resource-limited environments.
The mobile platform will be used by healthcare workers for home-based and clinic visits, targeted revisits, and mobile based counseling guided by computer generated alerts. The technology will be integrated into AMRS, the EMR system servicing 500,000 individuals within the western Kenya catchment area.
AMPATH a global consortium of university based academic centers serving a population of 3.5 million in western Kenya has joined with Kenya’s Ministry of Health to deliver health services, conduct health research, and develop leaders in healthcare.
In another mobile tech development, ZIDI a mobile healthcare management system is also helping medical professionals in Kenya. ZIDI was developed by Micro Clinic Technologies Inc. to provide access to the internet via a mobile device, tablet, or computer. Today, ZIDI helps healthcare providers track procedures, lab tests, drug inventories, and facility revenues.