mHealth in Pakistan Ali Habib
The rapid uptake of mobile phone technology in Pakistan over the last several years has created opportunities to use mobile health (or mHealth) solutions to help solve some of the most pressing health problems the country faces. These include surveillance of diseases like TB, pneumonia, and dengue; as well as monitoring medication usage, children’s vaccination history, and maternal and child health. Further, mHealth technologies have developed early-warning systems for diseases, and have tracked civil registration and vital statistics. Mobile health solutions allow health workers to collect clean, validated data in the field and store that data in a central server generating electronic data that is easy to analyze and report. The electronic data is of course superior to outdated paper records, which are more error-prone; take longer to transport and analyze; and are more expensive and difficult to store, search through, and report on. Where mobile data connectivity is unavailable or unreliable, data can be stored offline on mobile devices and submitted when connectivity is available. Alternatively, short message service (SMS), which is nearly ubiquitous in the country, can be used as a medium of data transmission where Internet access is unavailable. Groups like Interactive Research and Development (IRD) in Pakistan have created a range of mobile TB surveillance and screening applications that are used by health workers to verbally screen people for TB—hundreds of thousands have been examined in Karachi over the past five years. Those found to potentially be suffering from the disease are given a diagnosis and care, often free of cost. All medical records of these individuals, from screening all the way through diagnosis and end of treatment, are entered Harvard South Asia Institute 43