01 Mar 2015

Applications developed under mobile Health Technologies (mHealth) use mobile devices to collect clinical data over a short period and offer real time monitoring of a patient

Dr Kabelo Mokgacha from the Ministry of Health said this at the Youth mHealth Innovation media event in Gaborone on February 24. Dr Mokgacha said mHealth was a term used for the practice of medicine and public health supported by mobile devices to provide health services and information.

He said that the first field emerged as a means of providing greater access to segments of a population in developing countries as well as improving the capacity of health systems in such countries to provide quality healthcare.

“As a department responsible for monitoring all data in the Botswana health system, we fully maintain our role in this collaborative efforts and we encourage our youth to come up with sustainable and rigorous technologies in this arena,” he said.

Dr Mokgacha said as the Health Informatics Unit, they believe that communicating mHealth technologies as a tool could enhance delivery of life-saving interventions through improvements of health systems performance such as coverage, quality, equity or efficiency would resonate with health decision-makers

He encouraged innovators to have three standards in mind when developing their solutions or apparatus that are easy to use, effective, medically accurate, valid and sound adding that collaboration between physician and the community was vital for a successful product development.

The absence of a shared language and approach to describe mHealth interventions would continue to hinder efforts to identify, catalog and synthesize evidence across the complex landscape, he said.

He noted that the ministry was working on an inclusive eHealth Strategy and mHealth Enterprise Framework adding that African countries such as Rwanda and Kenya have taken tremendous strides in the utilising mHealth platforms and also shared with the world the impact of such technologies.

“At a global scale innovators are developing life changing applications that would help doctors to determine the right amount of insulin to give to a diabetic patient, a tool that links expectant mothers to gestation age-specific pregnancy information,” and he pleaded with Botswana youth to draw inspiration from such examples.

Director, Corporate Affairs at Orange Botswana Ms Lepata Mafa said that her company has been part of this initiative since 2013 and it aimed to leverage on mobile penetration to support the public health care system.

She said that technology was a critical element of social development hence the involvement of Orange Botswana in the initiative, adding that there were plenty of opportunities to use all networks and technologies to develop specific sectors in Botswana for economic and social benefits.

Ms Mafa said that the winners of the competition were given access to the Orange technical platform to host their online services to carry out tests for their applications before they launch them. “This technical connection between the competitor systems and the Orange technical platform allows them to send messages to their clients,” she said. ENDS