News: Digital Health

New Insights from Old Numbers: Artificial Intelligence Makes Sense of Health Ministry Data
Ministries of health have more data than ever before—and the amount of data is increasing at an exponential rate. But what good is all that information if it’s unwieldy or difficult to use? Over the course of nine weeks, IntraHealth International’s digital health team and staff from our Regional Health Integration to Enhance Services in Eastern Uganda (RHITES-E) project modeled a machine-learning approach to glean insights from the flood of...
How National Health Workforce Accounts Can Help Governments Achieve Universal Health Coverage
National governments that want to achieve the health-related targets of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) or universal health coverage (UHC) need a health workforce with the right size and skill mix to meet their populations’ health needs. But you can’t have a skilled health workforce without teachers and trainers who can prepare health workers for their specific roles in the health care system. Yet countries globally face...
iHRIS Data Result in Savings for Kenya’s Kilifi County Health Sector
In Kenya, the health workforce data provided through the integrated human resources information system (iHRIS) is turning fortunes around. When Kenya decentralized its health system management from one national hub to 47 individual county governments in 2013, young county departments of health found themselves struggling. They needed to identify, track, and monitor their workforces while facing looming staff shortages, labor disputes, and high...
How to Have Happier Users and Better Health Data with Faster Apps
I’ve done my share of training district health officers and others in low-resource settings. I know that the vast majority of health workers who report data in district offices or health facilities in the low- and middle-income countries where IntraHealth International works are on congested 2G mobile networks in small towns. Which means they’re waiting—waiting for web applications to load over poor Internet connections. Complete and accurate...
Exploring mHealth Applications for the iHRIS Software
According to a report on global mobile trends released by infoDev and the World Bank, three out of four people worldwide have access to mobile phones. This signals great potential for mobile health applications. Mobile health (or mhealth) solutions are among the strategies IntraHealth International already employs in supporting frontline health workers who are combatting HIV/AIDS. In the coming year, we will also be exploring how best to port...
The e-Health Africa Conference 2012: Integrating m-health into e-Health Strategy Implementation
The e-Health Africa Conference 2012: Integrating m-health into e-Health Strategy Implementation is one of the first multi-stakeholder events focusing on e-Health in Africa that will take place on the continent. The conference will identify best practices and lessons-learned from those who are in the process of developing, or have already developed national e-Health strategies. In addition, the conference places a special...
Utilizing Health Workforce Information and Mobile Phone Technology in Uganda
The Uganda Medical and Dental Practitioners’ Council (UMDPC) recently launched a new mobile directory, which provides information Ugandans can use to seek health services from qualified health workers at qualified facilities. By combining health workforce data with mobile phone technology, the system also allows council staff and health facility managers to easily verify health professionals’ credentials and cut down on unqualified practitioners...
mHealth Africa Summit—the Personal Emerging
This post was originally published on the IntraHealth International blog . It is by our Informatics Team Lead, Dykki Settle. Last month, I wrote mHealth: the Possibilities of the Personal about the importance of capitalizing on people’s personal attachments to and investments in their cellphones as a key to making mHealth programs scalable and widely successful. Then I went to Accra, Ghana for the mHealth Africa...
GHC Conference: Talking About Mobile Health
I am only attending the Global Health Council Conference for today, unfortunately, but I was at two great sessions this morning. I'm going to highlight the key points in this post and the next, and I hope my colleagues will pick up where I left off for the remainder of the conference. The first session was called "Transformations: Discovering New Strategies Using Proven Technologies," but it was really all about mobile health (or mHealth, if you...
Mobile Phones for Health in Africa
While Africa has not developed the extensive wired infrastructure of the "Global North," they have managed to leapfrog wired technology to an unprecedented adoption of mobile phones. According to the UN Foundation, fully 64% of mobile users are in the developing world, and 80% of the world’s population now live in an area with mobile coverage. This number will rise to 85% by next year alone. These are the very areas of the world with the...