mHealth:
Global Overview
Over the last two years, the level of interest in mobile
for development across World Vision’s fundraising and
program implementation offices has increased greatly.
From a modest start with three funded mobile health
projects, World Vision's mHealth portfolio now
reaches 16 countries in Africa, South & Southeast
Asia.
In various countries, grants are being strategically timed and geographically positioned to
leverage rather than duplicate effort. Donors across this growing global portfolio include
USAID, DFID, IrishAid, AusAid, CIDA, WHO, African Development Bank, Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation, and various private funders. To best support this work,
World Vision has intentionally and strategically aligned mobile for health at a global level
across a wide range of World Vision fundraising and implementation offices, based on an
agreed Vision Statement and Principles for its mHealth work.
MHEALTH VISION STATEMENT
Empower the most vulnerable households and community health workers/volunteers
through the use of common, shared, multi-functional and collaboratively designed mobile
health solutions to deliver community –based health interventions.
Principles for our work
 Coherence and quality of approach and program/project management
 ALWAYS in partnership with others and building on global learning
 Designed to meet the needs to community users but also provide the basis for maturing
the evidence base
 Initially affordable yet based on sustainable costing models and scalable technology
 Considers data governance issues
 Uses and strengthens government partners’ information systems
 Favors open-source solutions and emerging global standards
Public-private partnerships
World Vision is cultivating new and
leveraging existing collaborations with
Ministries of Health, donors, solution
providers and mobile network
operators. Notably, World Vision has
been collaborating with the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation, Grameen
Foundation, and Dimagi in a publicprivate partnership arrangement to
deploy a global, scalable mobile health
solution (Motech Suite) to support
various health and nutrition
programming approaches. This allows
World Vision’s mHealth projects to
use a common, yet customizable,
field-tested mHealth tool.
iNGOs
Funders
Ministries of
Health
Technology
Providers
Mobile
Operators
The advantages of a shared solution include minimizing software development, operations, and
support costs, as well as sharing source codes, best practices, learning, and other assets to
avoid duplication; and ultimately, contributing to improved maternal and child health . This
model has already streamlined effort and overall costs at the global level, as well as for each
project. In some cases where Ministries of Health have already made significant investments in
alternative solutions (for example RapidSMS in Rwanda and JAMII Smart in Kenya), World
Vision supports that direction with their funded projects.
Initial project results
Dimagi’s CommCare solution, a key component of the MoTECH Suite, was first piloted in
World Vision’s USAID-funded Child Survival Health program in Afghanistan (2008-2013), and
the evaluation results comparing intervention and comparison groups were encouraging:
 Increase of 20 percentage points in antenatal care visits (P-value = 0.0038),
 Increase of 12.6 percentage points in both families with a birth plan and families with
improved coordination with the health facility (P-value = 0.04 and P-value = 0.004
respectively),
 Increase of 12.9 percentage points in knowledge of two or more pregnancy danger signs
(P-value = 0.05).
Evaluation of World Vision’s Mozambique mHealth project (Gates-funded Grand Challenges
2010-2012 again using the CommCare solution) suggested that pregnant women in the
project’s intervention area more frequently accessed antenatal care, were better prepared for
birth, and gave birth more often with the assistance of a skilled provider. They also appeared to
be more familiar with signs of pregnancy complications and to seek care at a facility following
danger sign recognition.
These evaluations have informed an mHealth Theory of Change that provides a flexible yet
systematic framework for measuring program results over time.
An Emerging Social Enterprise
World Vision and its MoTECH Suite collaborators have endeavored to create governance,
operating and business models based on a social enterprise approach, which comprises a
consortium of technology providers, donors and NGOs, together with negotiated agreements
with Ministries of Health and mobile network operators. A social enterprise is an organization
or consortium that applies a business strategy to maximize improvements in human and socioeconomic well-being through a low-profit offering that is affordable even in challenging
economic contexts, rather than maximizing profits for external shareholders.
This model aligns well with the objective of developing a sustainable business model which
allows for an open source product to be provided to partners and collaborators at a lower
cost, yet is configured for use by governments, general population, NGOs and other
stakeholders.
As negotiations with mobile network operators and other potential private sector partners
develop, this model is expected to evolve toward an increasingly financially sustainable
approach. Additionally, analysis of this business model is under way, with an eye to maximize
economies of scale and sustainability.
World Vision’s Global mHealth Portfolio
World Vision is currently implementing mHealth projects in Afghanistan, Zambia, Sierra Leone,
Uganda, Tanzania, India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Kenya (JAMII Smart), and Rwanda (RapidSMS) and
is moving forward in 2014 with additional implementations in Afghanistan, Cambodia,
Mozambique, Uganda, Zambia, Niger, and Ghana. For more information on each country
project including local contact information, please visit http://wvi.org/mhealth.
 Green - Countries with current MoTECH Suite deployments:
Afghanistan, Zambia, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Tanzania, India, Sri
Lanka, Indonesia.
 Blue - Other mHealth deployments: Kenya, Rwanda,
 Orange – MoTECH Suite or other deployments planned in
2014: Cambodia, Niger, Mozambique, Ghana.