Feasibility of mHealth in South Africa: a new report

With the support of UK Government, Mobile for Development?s mHealth Initiative recently conducted a South Africa mHealth Feasibility Report. The report is available here.

Our latest report aims to provide an overview of the feasibility of mHealth in South Africa from the mobile operator perspective, by describing at a high level:

• The opportunity for mHealth
• Current mHealth services
• Implementation landscape
• Policy / regulatory environment
• Options for scaling

South Africa?s Health Care Reality

Compared to the rest of Africa, South Africa has a relatively high spend on health care with an unequal distribution. For example, the per capita spend for someone in the private sector is US$3,488, but the per capita spend for someone in the public sector is only US$443. Further inequalities in healthcare access are highlighted with the capacity of physicians and nurses. ?Overall, South Africa doesn?t have a shortage of physicians and nurses, however only 30% of them work in the public sector which serves 84% of the population.

Priority health areas in South Africa are in maternal and child health and HIV/AIDS. While MDG 4 and MDG 5 are most in danger of not being achieved, HIV/AIDS remains the top cause of mortality.

With mobile penetration among the highest in Africa, as also the quality and coverage of the mobile networks, mHealth has a great potential in South Africa.? Mobile presents an opportunity to:

INCREASE ACCESS TO:

• Health information
• Diagnosis
• Better treatment and monitoring

IMPROVE CAPACITY BY:

• More consistent education for health care workers
• Decreasing errors in data collection and health assessment
• Providing more direct access to health care expertise in areas with low health access

REDUCE BURDEN OF COSTS TO:

• Consumers who can minimise wasted trips to clinics
• The health system through patients managing their health better & more efficient/accurate data collection

Current mHealth services

While we list 83 live services currently in South Africa, key use cases are in demand generation and community health worker empowerment addressing specifically maternal and child health and HIV/AIDS.

Implementation landscape

Services with commercial sustainable business cases are rare; however we are seeing a wealth of experience in each partner group within the mHealth value chain ? all the way from content providers, technology providers and content aggregators to mobile operators. That said, partner groups have well defined target business models for sustainability yet challenges to execute plans still need to be overcome.

Read the full report

Above is a summary of first part of the findings in the Report. In addition you can read about Mobile operators? implementation landscape, Mobile operators? perception of mHealth services and a selection of mHealth solution providers, the policy & regulatory environment and options for scaling.

We would appreciate any feedback to the report and on the overall Pan-African mHealth Initiative in South Africa.?

Source: http://www.gsma.com/mobilefordevelopment/feasibility-of-mhealth-in-south-africa-a-new-report

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