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Mobile health applications for HIV prevention and care in Africa
Jamie I Forrest1, Matthew Wiens, Steve Kanters
1aGlobal Evaluative Sciences bSchool of Population and Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada cRwanda Biomedical Center, Kigali, Rwanda dBasel Institute for Clinical Epidemiology & Biostatistics and Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, University of Basal, Basal, Switzerland eDepartment of Medicine, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada fSchool of Public Health and Community Medicine, University of Rwanda, Kigali, Rwanda.
Purpose Of Review:
More people have mobile phones in Africa than at any point in history. Mobile health (m-health), the use of mobile phones to support the delivery of health services, has expanded in recent years. Several models have been proposed for conceptualizing m-health in the fields of maternal-child health and chronic diseases. We conducted a literature review of m-health interventions for HIV prevention and care in African countries and present the findings in the context of a simplified framework.
Recent Findings:
Our review identified applications of m-health for HIV prevention and care categorized by the following three themes: patient-care focused applications, such as health behavior change, health system-focused applications, such as reporting and data collection, and population health-focused applications, including HIV awareness and testing campaigns.
Summary:
The potential for m-health in Africa is numerous and should not be limited only to direct patient-care focused applications. Although the use of smart phone technology is on the rise in Africa, text messaging remains the primary mode of delivering m-health interventions. The rate at which mobile phone technologies are being adopted may outpace the rate of evaluation. Other methods of evaluation should be considered beyond only randomized-controlled trials.
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