Characterizing Consumer Health Informatics in Low and Middle Income Countries

Consumer Health Informatics (ConsHI) involves patients in health care through ICT, with Low and Middle Income Countries recently entering the field. Compelling successes and complete failures call for the identification of success factors. Of 1092 automatically retrieved articles, 85 were classified as ConsHI. Their service characteristics and the economic and societal factors of the countries of origin were classified. Descriptive statistics were applied in the search for clusters of features that together appear as driving factors. Most factors (financial endowment, number of languages spoken etc) showed no or paradoxical effects. Societal maturity and low population density appear as enabling factors.