mHMtaani: Bringing Mobile Health to the Community

While project funding primarily addresses HIV and AIDS prevention, treatment, care, and support services, APHIAplus is intended to support integration of many services, including maternal and child health.

This initiative is a part of APHIAplus, a Pathfinder project funded by USAID.

In Kenya, Pathfinder developed and deployed a decision and counseling support tool on the CommCare software platform covering maternal and child health as well as orphans and vulnerable children topics that community health workers provide at the household level. This mHealth initiative, implemented in Nairobi and Coast provinces, is supported by Dimagi, Inc. and the Core Group along with funding from USAID through Pathfinder’s APHIAplus project.  The maternal, newborn, and child health and orphan and vulnerable children applications were developed and deployed in December 2012. Pathfinder’s project in Nairobi works within the Kenyan Government’s Community Strategy and National Health Strategic Plan to roll out the Health Services Extension Package.

Within the framework of these initiatives, the project seeks to improve and streamline the community health worker experience as well as the quality of their data collection. Efforts to integrate the APHIAplus data collected through CommCare into the national DHIS2 information system and the community based information system implemented by the USAID-led APHIAInfo project are underway. In addition to using the mobile applications for community health workers, Pathfinder also uses a mobile-based payment system provided through Safaricom called mPesa to pay community health workers and other office costs. The project is currently rolling out across Nairobi and Coast, with an expected 300 community health workers using CommCare by August 2013. The goal is to reach more than 2,700 community health workers by the end of 2015.