How Can eHealth Help the Poorest? (Part 1, mHealth and Entrepreneurship)

Hassan Masum, GHI’s Aman Bhandari, Jody Ranck and Alex Jadad set out to ask the world’s health, technology and development experts: “How can eHealth help the poorest?” Today is the first of  a 3 part guest series on mHealth and Entrepreneurship.

There have been many examples of eHealth impact in resource-limited settings, using technologies such as cell phones and telemedicine. But many questions remain. Which eHealth innovations have the most potential? What are the barriers to scaling up these innovations? How can they be designed with front-line health providers in mind?

We were inspired by a previous PLoS Medicine article which asked the question, which intervention would most improve the health of the poorest global citizens? We gathered opinions from a variety of thought leaders and practitioners, asking them to name the implemented eHealth innovation that would most improve the health of those living in poverty. We also sought relevant views from the “Making the eHealth connection” conference, which aimed to “…focus specifically on the application of eHealth solutions for low-resource environments.”

The goal of asking for an implemented innovation was to produce “grounded novelty”. By asking for eHealth innovations that have already been implemented (even if at a small scale), the focus was put on demonstrably feasible options that could be scaled up and adapted to tackle health challenges for the lowest-income global citizens.

The first cluster of responses focuses on mHealth and entrepreneurship.