Making Mhealth Happen for Health Information Systems in Low Resource Contexts

The paper offers a reference typology for large scale mHealth solutions in lowresource contexts. The proposed typology is produced through action research engagement with various mHealth initiatives within primary health care; including one fully deployed large-scale solution, medium-sized pilot studies and projects currently being implemented. Our investigations are informed by theoretical assumptions about the cultivation of health information infrastructures, through evolutionary strategies of installed base cultivation and local patchwork through bricolage. We view the extension of national Health Information Systems (HIS) through mobile phones to the community level as a socio-technical cultivation process shaped and determined by the availability of communication infrastructures, handset dispersion, telecom service provider schemes and tariffs, local politics & policies available skilled manpower and established work practices. Through the proposition of a reference typology for mHealth implementation strategies we aim to address the need for identification and cross-fertilization of appropriate mobile based approaches for extending digitized HISs to the community health facilities in a continuously changing development context.