mHealth4Afrika – Challenges When Co-Designing a Cross-Border Primary Healthcare Solution

Supported by the European Commission, mHealth4Afrika is co-designing and validating a modular, multilingual, state of the art health information system to address primary healthcare requirements in resource constrained environments. This platform has been co-designed in partnership with Ministries of Health, district health officers, clinic managers and primary healthcare workers from urban, rural and deep rural health centres in Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi and South Africa. This paper provides insights into environment within which this platform is being co-designed and validated and discusses challenges and opportunities associated with co-designing a cross-border solution. While co-designing a solution optimized for subsequent adaptation with only limited need for scarce programming resources is demanding, the flexibility created can make a significant contribution to strengthening primary health delivery at scale in resource constrained environments.