Practical challenges for large-scale deployment of mHealth solution insights from a field trial

In low and middle-income countries (LMIC), providing healthcare services to the rural population has been a challenge. The distribution of the pool of skilled healthcare resources is uneven with a large concentration in cities. People from the rural areas have to travel to the cities to avail even basic healthcare facilities. In order to provide universal healthcare access, various Governments, hospitals, and NGO´s (Non-Government Organizations) have started “task shifting”, where healthcare tasks are delegated to the less specialized workforce by leveraging the power of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). However, there has not been any publication on the technical challenges of deploying such ICT-based solutions at scale and on the effectiveness of such solutions in the field. The main problems in the effective implementation of ICT-based solutions in rural locations are limited skills and motivation of community health workers, lack of low cost technology solution affecting overall project sustainability, poor utilization of existing services due to low awareness and gender issues. The following paper highlights the challenges of deploying a Smartphone based healthcare system in rural areas, our approach to solving those problems and the insights obtained from a field trial.