NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Friday, January 3, 2014

Want to scale your mHealth solution? Mobile health implementers say the key is to engage with the government early and often so that they will eventually take over the project and bring it to scale.

Many mHealth tools focus on improving access to services, level of care and gathering data, all of which often require engaging frontline government health workers, working with government-run health clinics and integrating into health information management systems.

Whereas in some cases in the past government has been engaged only superficially or is brought into the process after a program is underway, mHealth implementers are reaching a consensus that identifying and cultivating champions within government from the start of the project is critical to securing buy-in — and potentially handing the project over to the government to scale in the long run.