mHealth4Afrika Pilot Validation in Healthcare Facilities in Ethiopia, Kenya and Malawi

mHealth4Afrika has co-designed and validated a standards-based, comprehensive patient-centric health platform for use in resource constrained environments around the world. Suppored by the European Commission under Horizon 2020, mHealth4Afrika was co=designed to be adaptable and extensible, modular and multilingual. mHealth4Afrika integrates Electronic Health Record (EHR) and Electronic Medical Record (EMR) functionality with the use of medical sensors and analytical, data visualisation and decision support tools at the point of care. It supports automatic counting of aggregate program indicator data required by Ministries of Health and SMS appointment notifications to encourage attendance at medical appointments. HL7 FHIR integration has also been undertaken to support transfer of vital sign readings from CE approved medical sensors, lab system data exchange, and the ability to import and export individal patient records to support patient mobility. mHealth4Afrika has leveraged a user-centred design and Collaborative Open Innovation based approach, working in partnership with Ministries of Health, District Health Offices, Clinics Managers and healthcare professionals in healthcare facilities in Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi and South Africa to inform required functionality, workflow and usability requirements. Following three years of co-design, alpha and beta development, the pilot platform was formally validated in real-life environments by 101 healthcare professionals from 13 of the 23 intervention health facilities in Northwest Ethiopia, Western Kenya and Southern Malawi and 28 clinicians from South Africa, between October 2018 and April 2019. The feedback received was very positive.