GSMA mHa Mobile Health Summit Cape Town, June 6-9

First global event dedicated to mHealth education Sessions focused on – How mHealth education is being rolled out in the field – How mobile technology can address the health skills gap – Who will pay for health education Included speakers from Text to Change, Praekelt Foundation, Grameen Foundation, UNICEF, etc. Coincided with distribution of new report on mHealth education with five case studies and a compendium of 23 mHealth Ed initiatives

Conference Sessions: State of the Industry Health in a Connected World: Prevention, Treatment & Cure Delivering an mHealth Ecosystem Who Pays the Bill? eHealth & mHealth Architecture Examining User Confidence Capacity Building Dealing with Chronic Disease Continuum of Care: Maternal, Newborn & Child Health

Presenters Health Industry (United Healthcare, Sanofi Aventis) Consulting Companies (McKinsey, Vital Wave) Mobile Operators (MTN, Telecom Italia) Developers (D-Tree, Cell Life, Medic Mobile) NGOs (World Vision, UNICEF) Government (Philippine Dept. of Health, South Afr. govt.) Entrepreneurs (Changamka MicroHealth, Sproxil) Donors/UN (WHO, Clinton Health Access Initiative) Industry (Qualcomm, Ericcson, Microsoft, Pfizer) Academia (Columbia University, JHU)

First time WHO Global Observatory for eHealth surveyed members on mHealth Survey completed by 114 countries Documents adoption of initiatives, types of initiatives, status of evaluation & barriers to implementation Surveyed 14 categories of mHealth services including: – health call centers – emergency toll-free telephone services – managing emergencies and disasters – mobile telemedicine – appointment reminders – community mobilization & health promotion – treatment compliance – mobile patient records – information access – patient monitoring – health surveys and data collection – Surveillance – health awareness raising – decision support systems

Presenters Observations from Piers Fewer “pilot/project” presentations; more TelCo/Insurance Co participation (follows trend of Washington mHealth Summits) Most interesting low-bandwidth innovation was SimApps presentation from Medic Mobile. mHealth “ecosystem” picture, though fragmented, coming more into focus. Working with TelCos in country may work best by pooling demand among projects. Remaining uncertainties include where governments will get involved, and what they see as their role. Demand for/interest in mHealth Toolkit, and resources therein, remains high – and awareness of the Toolkit and the working group was fairly good as well.

Observations from Marasi Develop applications within a the context of a country’s eHealth strategy Interoperability and standardization of mHealth systems will enable their scalability Integrate monitoring and evaluation in mHealth activities to determine if desired impact is being achieved For sustainability and sound business models – create value chains Increase the role of health professionals in the design, implementation and monitoring of mHealth systems Empowering community health workers will be instrumental in achieving MDG 4 & 5