Our partner the eDevelopment Thematic Group of the World Bank is coming up with an event on Mobile Applications: Case Studies and Business Model Analysis.

From the event page:

This global event will connect specialists and practitioners from countries across four regions to share the latest World Bank study on the use of mobile applications for the health sector and the agriculture and rural development sector. A 90-minute session is scheduled for each sector.

Case studies from Haiti, India, Kenya, The Philippines and Sri Lanka will be presented.

The date for the event is Thursday, January 21 from 8:00 to 11:15 a.m. Washington time.

The event can be watched online via webcast. The Twitter hashtag is #wbmapps. Here the Facebook event page.

Notes of the World Bank ICT Sector Unit event Global CIO Dialogue on the Future of Government Transformation on 8 November.

Trying to bring the learned lessons from practicioners all around the world (UK, Moldova, Singapore) to real-life projects.

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Philippe Dongier, Sector Manager, Sector ICT Unit, The World Bank

Opening remarks - Introduction of speakers and country audiences

The World Bank is working right now with Moldova on a large government transformation project and this project is also introduced today

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Keynote Address by John Suffolk, UK Government CIO

“Somebody somewhere in the world has already solved the problem” - bringing people together has a large value

It’s difficult to predict the next steps of technology - nobody knew that Facebook, Twitter, … would change the world like that

Governments must respond to the changing needs of globalization

• different media for services (paper, telephone, online forms, …)
• governments are online
• countries’ agencies are very integrated (fed, state, local) - also because of consumer demand
• outsourcing of sectors to the private sector
• Example: iTunes to get text for police officers to different languages when trying to arrest people

Different countries have expertise concerning different eGovernment sectors - mobile services, identity management, …

Tranparency is an issue

• we publish crime data - quickly Android application appeared to show crime in different areas
• UK approach: publishing as much data as we can

The next technology changes cannot be predicted - but what are the trends?

• we have stopped worrying about the future - nobody can keep track of it
• risk is rising
• approach is important: which outcome do I want to deliver?
• everything pervasive is interesting
• not into long term contracts
• not paying big license fees
• scalable services
• all things mobile
• combining small services rather than having monolithic big systems

Where should I start?

• there is no single start position - everybody has a different start position
• start where you can simply and quickly achieve something
• try to pick services which create an infrastructure for another service

Summary

• it’s critically important to bring parties together - learning from each other
• we need to think about where we want to be in 5 years time - past problems are already gone
• anything you can do with teaming up with other countries to solve a similar issue will reduce your risk and learn from each other

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World Bank Project Example: Moldova Governance eTransformation by Stela Mocan, Executive Director of e-Government Center, Moldova

[read the whole article]

Our partner the eDevelopment Thematic Group of the World Bank is coming up with another workshop on government transformation via ICTs.

After interesting workshops on - for example

• FLOSS in the public sector
• The Singapore experience
• Investing in broadband infrastructure
• Financial crisis and cloud computing

this time the organizers decided to take a look in the future of government transformation. As written on the eTG homepage of the event:

This workshop [...] will feature a keynote presentation by Mr. John Suffolk, Government CIO of UK, who will share the experience of United Kingdom and will speak of the latest technology trends and how they impact government transformation. This will be followed by a panel discussion with senior government officials and CIOs from leading countries on their vision of how online tools and advanced technology can be used to make government processes more transparent, to encourage informed public participation, to foster collaboration across government and with other sectors of society, and to make government administration more cost-effective during the next 5 years. The panelists will discuss the ways in which the cutting edge technologies, such as cloud computing, web 2.0, mobile technology and open data are pursued as tools for government transformation, as reflected in e-government strategies in their respective countries.

The workshop will also introduce the Moldova Governance e-Transformation project as an example of an innovative government transformation initiative leveraging the latest technologies in the context of a transition country [...]

The date for the event is November 8 from 8:30 to 10:45 a.m. Washington time.

If you are interested in watching the workshop or even participating, you can register for the webcast and post your questions on Twitter (hashtag #WBCIO). You can find more information and the agenda at the eTG event page on the future of government transformation. After the event you’ll also find a summary here on the blog.

Notes of the Global ICT Department event IT for Climate-Smart Development: “Not Your Grandfather’s Bank” at the Social Development Forum on January 20.

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We don’t have solutions for climate change and as there are very many stakeholders it is hard to agree on a solution

Global ICT department addresses this issue from the policy angle, but there have to be business models for private investments as well

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Frank Rijsberman, Director Program of Google.org

Managing climate risk in the cloud

“Innovating for good” - 1% equity spent to innovation

Climate change is impacting people in poor countries

• Sea level rise in Holland and Bangladesh is the same
• But Bangladesh is impacted quite more

Information scarcity increases climate change vulnerability

• acquiring information
• disseminating information
• enabling

Examples where Google.org is involved:

[read the whole article]

In the course of our partnership with the eDevelopment Thematic Group we are happy to announce an upcoming event of our partner: IT for Climate-Smart Development: “Not Your Grandfather’s Bank”.

From the IT for Climate-Smart Development event page:

The session will aim to raise staff understanding of how ICT can be used to achieve better results in climate mitigation and adaptation efforts. Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) promise to be important enablers of climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts in several sectors. Examples may include the use of ICTs in:

• Climate monitoring for weather forecasting and predicting, detecting and mitigating the effects of natural disasters, monitoring analysis and control of industrial processes, among others;
• Lowering energy consumption and GHG in the power networks (e.g. through smart grids);
• IT applications in smart buildings and smart motor systems;
• “Dematerialization” via e-government applications
• Adapting agriculture and water resource management systems to evolving weather patterns using satellite-based information and simple mobile phone applications, smart irrigation and logistics.

An important theme will be the rapidly growing reach of mobile phone networks (more than 3bn phones in use in developing countries) and the potential to leverage these networks for climate change efforts.

Another important theme is investing in and growing the ‘clean’ technology sectors of developing countries, so that the economic opportunities presented by clean technologies are realized.

Speakers are

• Jatin Singh, CEO SkyMet (India)
• Frank Rijsberman, Director Program of Google.org
• Monique Meche, Director, Environment Policy and Sustainability, Cisco Systems

So make sure you’ll be online on January 20 from 9:00 to 10:30 a.m. Washington time.

We’ll cover it here on the blog and tweet about it - the hashtag is #it4dev.

From tomorrow until Friday the Development Marketplace 2009, hosted by the World Bank Group in Washington takes place. The event is the final date for the Development Marketplace competition - dealing with the topic of Climate Adaption this year. Over 1700 projects tackling climate change were handed in and 100 of them were chosen to reach the final selection stage. Up to 25 of the projects will win - and be funded with a $ 200 000 grant - funded by the World Bank Group, the Global Environment Facility, the International Fund for Agriculture Development, Denmark’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other partners.

The whole event will be covered fully on social media - including a DM2009 FlickR group, DM2009 Twitter account, DM2009 Youtube channel, DM 2009 Facebook and DM2009 LinkedIn event. It will also be broadcasted live (DM2009 live webcast) - starting tomorrow at 3 PM Austrian time.

Looking through the projects, there are several ICT4D-related ones there. What’s interesting though, is that the ICT used most in the projects is radio. There is only one project using SMS.

As the finalists are getting a small training how to use social media and ICT (they can borrow a camera and shoot videos with them) during the event, I am curious if they will find it useful and maybe even pick it up for the future development of their projects.

Three of the teams with ICT-related projects will even be interiewed tomorrow during the live webcast:

• Philippine Business for Social progress: Strengthening Disaster Preparedness of Southern Leyte with SMS Technology
• Resource and Analysis Center “Society and Environment”: Rate-and-Shame Project Would Raise Media Pressure on Public Officials
• Relief International-Schools Online (RI-SOL): Media Access and Education for Climate Change Adaptation and Risk Reduction

If you are interested in them - check their projects at the DM2009 project repository, watch the webcast tomorrow and post your questions and comments on Twitter - with the hashtag #dm2009.

Notes from the eDevelopment Thematic Group event World Bank Day @ mHealth Summit - mHealth from policy to implementation.

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Session 6: Operationalizing mHealth: How do we translate mHealth applications into measurable health outcomes

Beyond the widespread global usage of mHealth applications, there remains a gap due to the lack of data and long-term impact assessments on health outcomes to validate the effectiveness of mHealth. Evaluation frameworks and studies are currently in process to fill this gap and this will be the subject of discussion between the panelists in this session along with the importance of monitoring and evaluation frameworks for this nascent sector.

Chairs: Armin Fidler, Advisor, Health, Nutrition and Population and Claire Thwaites, UN Foundation

This is an important question

• how can outcomes be measured?
• some people may even say it can’t be measured

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Panel Discussion

Patty Mechael, mHealth and Telemedicine Advisor for the Earth Institute

Unfortunately the evidence is quite thin

• study on pilot projects
• randomized control trials
• but still developing this and figuring what works and what doesn’t

mHealth in Millennium Village project

• bringing connectivity to villages
• improving internal communication
• toll-free emergency numbers

Several applications

• child monitoring system

eHealth ecosystem

• closed loop system
• linking to the other systems - interoperable

Tested hypotheses:

• mobile technologies can improve access to health access -> health outcomes
• quality of care -> health outcomes
• improving efficiency & lowering cost

Focus on your goals and work your way backwards

Gold standard in health research: randomized control trials

• Also on mHealth solutions

Everybody who works on a project should think of how to evaluate it

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Julie Smith, Director of Public-Private Partnerships, CDC Foundation

Project: Phones for Health

Partnership with several organizations

Performance metrics - various areas of focus

• also focusing on partnership performance
• evaluating public-private partnerships

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Rachel Glennerster, MIT Poverty Labs

We run randomized control trials

What are the challenges?

• patients behaviour - is generally irrational
• health care workers - are acting irresponsible

Several measures to improve the behaviour

• upfront incentives
• deadlines
• …

Implications - health worker reliability

• reliable objective monitoring

Taking the result to existing evaluation to create an mHealth product which is working

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Andrew Stern, Partner, Dalberg Global Advisors

Evaluation - Theory of Change logic frame

Why do some projects work and some not?

• differences between countries

Learnings

• mHealth is not a solution to broken health care systems

Identifying critical challenges that constrain success

• decision making & budget
• lack of authority or money

Once again - data without action is worthless

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Q & A session

A lot of sessions mentioned that mHealth is not a fix for the health system - but particular aspects can be improved definitely

How do we get the results of the evaluation back to the policy?

Anybody experience in dealing with mental health with ICTs?

Aswers:

Rachel Glennerster:

• There is definitely a role of ICT to fix the health system, not for every single mHealth project - but some are very helpful
• Mental health? Really challenging for health systems in developing countries - no study seen so far
• every sector says - we have no time to evaluate, we need to act now, but it’s not an excuse

Patty Mechael:

• Getting systems to work can be very challenging
• Even being able to study a situation before implementing a project is a way of getting to success easier

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Closing Remarks

Armin Fidler, Advisor, Health, Nutrition and Population, World Bank

Repeat what I heard during the day

• Mobile phones are a cross cutting platform, it’s a means to an end
• There is evidence that it can improve the functioning of health systems and also the outcomes - although it is hard to measure
• It’s not only about scalability, also about sustainability
• Funding has an implication on competition
• eHealth policies can impede innovations - when is the right time?
• How to creat good business models to create win-win for all stakeholders?
• Leapfrogging

The way forward

• maybe in 20 years eHealth will be just usual and be an integral part of health
• exchaning information, how to collaborate - we should be doing more of that
• evaluation - more concerted effort to disseminate lessons learned
• scaling up - if we know something works, let’s make it big
• we need to keep an eye about the next step of technology
• it’s about health, it’s about people, it’s about change

Notes from the eDevelopment Thematic Group event World Bank Day @ mHealth Summit - mHealth from policy to implementation.

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Session 5: Showcasing mHealth Applications

This session will spotlight several mHealth applications that are being piloted and implemented. The panelists will provide demonstrations of their respective applications, provide an overview of why the applications were created and the direct impact in l countries where the technology has been introduced.

Co-Chairs: Armin Fidler, Advisor, Health, Nutrition and Population, World Bank

We always need to be aware of unintended consequences

• We should learn from our failures

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Eric Rasmussen, CEO, INSTEDD

mHealth system interoperability is a critical task

we looked at the gaps - and how can we fill them with FOSS

• GeoChat - SMS based, geotagging, mapping system, very successful
• Mesh4x - synchronizing different tools to share information
• Riff - collaborative decision support, cognitive analysis, sending messages when a problem appears
• Innovation Lab - teaching people everything that we know to make it their own and make it sustainablee, we use all other tools we find useful as well
• Trackernews.net

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Pamela Johnson, Co-Founder and Chief Health Officer, Voxiva

This is where everything started, thank you to the World Bank and Infodev to have been there from the beginning

Since 2001 we wokred on mHealth innovations around the world

• first pilot on Peru - increased to a country-based system and was adapted in other countries
• we learn from the developing world about things we want to deploy in the US

Project in 2009 - Mexico, flu and diabetes system

We looked in mobile phones because we were interested in scale

Lessons learned:

1- It’s not just about technology

• it’s about health, mobiles are only tools for health
• it’s about people
• our approach - we look at services which can use different technology, depending on different needs
• If you want to scale, you have to meet people where they are

2- Different technologies are for different things

3- Change is a constant

• the future will be different for sure

4- The regulatory requirement is really important

How to scale?

• It’s about people
• Avoid stovepipes - overkill of systems, devices, … may not be an improvement, standards are substantial
• Plan for sustainability - total cost of ownership: discuss who will take the responsibility for every sector of a project

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Josh Nesbit, Executive Director, Frontline SMS

Story how FrontlineSMS:Medic was developed

Internship in a rural hospital in Malawi

• Community health workers were disconnected from the hospital
• Trying to use FrontlineSMS for this purpose
• Training health workers how to use text messages

Effects:

• Patient care - became digital and much more efficient
• Logistics - partially automatized
• Community workers - became connected

Taking this forward - introducing the FrontlineSMS:Medic tool all around the world

New project: FrontlineForms

Linking with OpenMRS and Ushahidi

Lessons:

• focus on the end users and do programs their way
• low cost, available tools
• innovate on expressed needs

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Erica Kochi, Co-Lead Innovation Group UNICEF

We work directly with governments, giving them policy advice

Today: talking about RapidSMS

• open source framework to build SMS-based systems
• built on exisitng practices in the health system
• UNICEF will use it in 23 countries next year

Story starts in Ethiopia

• monitored distribution of food via RapidSMS - SMS data collection, online visualization
• cutting down the time needed for health workers

Other application in Malawi

• real time government information

Motivation for workers:

• sending symptoms and response SMS with diagnosis

Nigeria - Roll Back Malaria

Lessons learned:

• scale as a constraint
• partnerships are important
• utility for end users
• reinforce existing communication channels
• people have to find it useful
• build a local tech community

If you don’t use your data for action - it’s basically worthless

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Hajo van Beijma, co-Founder of Text to Change

mHealth in developing countries

• 5% is software, 95% is programs
• It’s about impact
• Challenges - we work with problems all day
• Scalability
• Focusing on the end user - what works?

We work with partnerships

• governments
• local NGOs

Key points:

• We believe in African software - strengthening the economy
• Look at the demands of local organisations & look at local content
• Interactive projects
• Create awareness
• Local languages
• Local content

Demand driving with new incentives - social incentives

Strengthening companies will help the mHealth movement in the end

Open source eveything - we are not there yet

Scaling is important - we are working on it

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Commentator: Arleen Cannata Seed, Senior e-Government Specialist, CITPO, World Bank

A lot of projects have been recently developed so there is no evidence on impact yet

Some of the results can be attributed to the link between mobile phones and changing of behaviour

Mobile phone has great attibutes - which can influence behaviour as much as no other thing recently

We must stay vigilant with this technology

We have to make use of technology as it evolves

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Q & A session

How are all these different programs working together?

What are important technology trends aside SMS - it’s pretty old?

How do we foster collaboration between those multiple initiatives?

Open source and open standards?

How to scale up pilot projects?

Answers:

Pamela Johnson:

• Integration of technology? We are working with other organisation which are active in the country - integrating services
• When is the right time for creating policies?

Hajo van Beijma:

• There is collaboration - e.g. Open mobile consortium

Josh Nesbit:

• We are trying to find rallying points to collaborate with systems in the same sector

Eric Rasmussen:

• Next technology? Utilization of new technology is increasing very fast - mCommerce will come soon; development of sensors - using mobile phone as platform for laboratory diagnosis
• It is difficult to see how hard it is to collaborate - because of the grant-making mechanism, which makes us all natural opponents

Erica Kochi:

• mHealth is not going to fix a broken health system
• Collaborate with the users on the ground

Notes from the eDevelopment Thematic Group event World Bank Day @ mHealth Summit - mHealth from policy to implementation.

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Part 2: Scaling-up Mobile Technology Innovations in Health Sector Projects

Session 4: Scaling Up Mobile Innovations in World Bank Health Sector Projects

This session will provide an overview of the potential contributions of ICT to health services in the countries that are facing greatest health problems, and how mHealth (and eHealth in general) can provide a new set of tools for Africa and other developing countries to tackle the long-standing health challenges. The session will discuss how ICT can help the Bank’s health operations to achieve their goals more efficiently and effectively as well as the key constraints. The session will also brainstorm how Bank can play a more active role in exploring and using ICT and the ways of scaling up ICT applications in World Bank health projects.

Chair: Eva Jarawan, Sector Manager, Africa Health Department, World Bank

Presentation by Feng Zhao, eHealth Coordinator, Africa Health Department, World Bank

eHealth and mHealth present tremendous opportunities, especially for developing countries

Tour to Telecomm 2009 Geneva - Open Network - Connected Minds

• Paul Kagame: Africa must be seen as an opportunity
• Communication is a basic human right
• Consensus:
• - world is different than just recently - due to mobiles
• - ICT is an engine to economic growth everywhere
• - ICT as answers to many challenges
• - ICTs are part of almost everything we do

We are dealing with a new - increasingly connected - world

Potential of ICT in health has not been well studied - mostly anecdotal stories

• Evidence can be seen in the initiatives of many countries
• ICTs contributions to service delivery are easy to see and systematic

Demystifying mHealth

• wrong perception that developing countries are not ready for mHealth

We should start a demand from the application side - then the connectivity will come

• There are urgent health problems - waiting is not an option

Currently people in Africa are paying too much for mobile services - but prices are decreasing and low-cost models for developing countries are possible

• eHealth can even be money saving

Developing countries are in greater need for ICT - for them eHealth is not an option, but a necessity

Bottlenecks

• knowledge
• integration and coordination
• policy
• capacity
• lack of evidence

Why is mHealth important for the World Bank?

• ICT can help reaching the MDGs - part of the responsibility of WB
• ICT can tackle structural problems in a new way
• WB has comparative advantages to promote mHealth and eHealth

Options for the World Bank:

• knowledge sharing
• capacity building
• evaluation
• mainstream ICT in health

eHealth requires strong partnerships

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Panel Discussion

Deepak Bhatia, Lead eGovernment Specialist, Global ICT Dept, World Bank

Value chain for mobiles - many different stakeholders involved

• how are they coming together to allow for mobile services to be delivered

World Bank can be an agent for standards

The success of mobile finance is something that should help promote mobile health services

Standards and interoperability of systems becomes extremely important

Cross cutting view - look at channels of eLearning and eFinance and use them

Evaluation of projects is important

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Souheil Marine, Head of ICT Application and Cybersecurity, International Telecommunication Union (via videoconference from Geneva)

Infrastructure:

• backbones are still lacking in developing countries
• We need this to enable mobile phones to access to the internet
• the digital divide is there

Cost:

• we dont have yet evidence that large scale application of mobile services can happen cost effective
• we don’t know the value chain for all stakeholders
• we need to build partnerships

In developing countries, eHealth is about making the scarce resource of a doctor more efficient

It’s health which is important, not eHealth

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Najeeb Al-Shorbaji, Director for eHealth, World Health Organization (via video conference from Geneva)

Partnership:

• like being invited to a party, everybody needs to bring something
• the big organisations start to undertand that

Cost-benefit analysis

• Like information itself it’s diffiecult to measure its impact
• Assumption: because the health sector is knowledge based, the more information is there and organized, the better outcome there is

Capicity building leads to more efficiency and better usage of ICT

Without content - high quality data - services will not take off

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Agnes Soucat, Advisor, Africa Health Department, World Bank

ICT is high on the agenda - but why?

• In developing countries, eHealth is probably a revolution
• we see more and more evidence that eHealth can leapfrog traditional healthcare systems in Africa

We should focus on redesigning their health systems

• instead of helping them build yesterday’s solutions

We haven’t given enough notice to public sector potential

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Q & A session

Microsoft - how do we jump in the development of the whole thing?

How do we incentify responsible behaviour in doctors by telemedicine?

Are we heading towards globalizing our health services and do we want that?

Answers:

Souheil Marine:

• In a developed country we can chose different doctors, but in developing countries mHealth services may allow to connect to the only doctor in the area

Najeeb Al-Shorbaji:

• Developing and developed world have to learn from each other
• We can’t impose tools to problems we never experienced
• Globalizing services? Happens already, giving people the choice is one of the most important thing we can do

Feng Zhao:

• This is about forming partnerships - we want to get to know all the stakholders, especially from the private sector
• World Bank - we are now caring more about output, not input - focusing on results
• We have had enough advocacy, we really need to get going

Notes from the eDevelopment Thematic Group event World Bank Day @ mHealth Summit - mHealth from policy to implementation.

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Session 3: Policy Perspectives on Using Mobile Technology for Better Health Outcomes

A key step in the process of mainstreaming and scaling-up mHealth is a sound eHealth and mHealth policy at the country level. The panelists in this session will present their views on developing a successful e/mHealth policy and provide examples of best practice and learning from around world.

• Panel Discussion

Chair: Elizabeth J. Ashbourne, Lead, Global Health Information Forums, World Bank/Health Metrics Network

Questions?

• can mHealth policy be created without a eHealth policy?
• are the policy priorities that are also connected to mHealth but lie in a different sector?
• who should be at the table discussing mHealth services to push the frontiers?

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Najeeb Al-Shorbaji, Director for eHealth, World Health Organization (via video conference from Geneva)

mHealth is an integral part of eHealth

• Important: mHealth as part of eHealth plan, not an island

Expected: 45% of traffic on phone will be data

Some global concerns related to mHealth

Importance of mHealth

• it’s used
• it’s people-centered

Research literature: mHealth is here to stay

Currently WHO conducting second global eHealth survey

• 75 countries
• end of November
• 15 of 20 African countries have eHealth initiatives

Lack of knowledge is #1 reason which prevent applications of mHealth, other reasons: operating costs, infrastructure, policy

Comparison Europe - Africa

• different barriers in mHealth
• no solutions can be just transferred

Issues in mHealth

• sustainability
• data exchange & interoperability
• data security

Important points

• Involving all stakeholders
• We need to find solutions which work on different networks and work everywhere if possible
• Multilingualism - not only English

WHO - big global eHealth initiative & we are happy to collaborate with other institutions

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Alison Bloch, m-Health advisor, GSMA

Mobile vs. Internet

• centralized & no competition vs. decentralized & everybody can put up their service
• slow innovation vs. easy innovation
• easy to identify people vs. anonymous

There are very many issues around health systems which include policy

How to engage public and private sector to work together in creating good regulations - fostering innovations

“Information makes markets work and markets improve welfare” - but also question of data ownership, privacy and security

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Karl Brown, Assistant Director for Applied Technology, Rockefeller Foundation

Issue: ordering when policy comes into discussion

• technology arrives first
• then policy
• then capacity building

Role for policy? How to foster innovation?

Over time mHealth, eHealth and traditional health information systems will merge

mHealth shouldn’ be a seperate policy sector, should be part of general health sector

Currently - eHealth councils are emerging in various countries

• private and public organizations discussing about regulations

We need to have a sense what such systems cost in the long term

Should there be a standardization in eHealth policies or just a checklist?

• Approaches to these policies is very varied in different countries
• Even in different ministries

How to link national policy efforts to international policy efforts?

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Patty Mechael, Earth Institute

What are we trying to achieve with this technology?

We should start to have guidelines to help countries figure out where to focus towards achieving the objectives concerning mHealth

Take a look at existing eHealth policies and see where the gaps are

The industry of mHealth around mServices has also to be taken into account

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Q & A session

Ghana:

Security and legislation - mHealth presents a lot of issues, World Bank can help member countries to develop a frameworkfor that

How can we identify projects that have potential?

Russia:

It’s important to develop a legislation to back up tele-medical services

We are ready to share our experience and knowledge about mobile & telemedical systems in rural areas

Tanzania:

Is it necessary to have a seperate policy for eHealth - if eGovernment is already covering that sector?

D.C. Audience:

How do we align comercial with public policy interests? What is being defined in terms of economic cost-benefit analysis?

We are talking about two different policies - we must remember health policy and how to integrate eHealth and mHealth in the traditional health sector. What makes sense and what doesn’t?

How to target the appropriate level of policy?

How is the role of the academic sector?

Answers:

Patty Mechael:

• Security & flexible policies - example: Ghana was open to developing guidelines before policies
• mHealth and mFinance should work together
• mHealth vs. eHealth vs. eGovernment: you have to have the connections between all these and find out where to get economies of scale

Najeeb Al-Shorbaji:

• What we are trying to do is to improve the health situation of people
• We have to make sure the content in high quality, no matter if m- or e-
• The “e” will disappear when “e” will be everywhere - the important thing is health
• There is an economic value in ICT - time saving, quality data, … - we need consisten, evidence based approaches to prove that to the governments
• Policy first or practice first? There are problems around eHealth - so we have to put in some guidelines, we can’t develop a policy for something we don’t know
• We have to keep health data of people away from other data

Alison Bloch:

• How to empower users / patients
• Business models? Can we do good and do well? Larger topic - bringing many groups to the table and try to create such models

Karl Brown:

• The future of eHealth is health
• Pilot projects? The country should think of what the long term costs are, that may benefit sustainable projects
• m-Pesa was informal system and evolved by itself
• As much innovation in mHealth should be fostered - without constraining it with policies upfront