02 November 2016
GovTech is an annual conference organised by the State Information Technology Agency in South Africa focused on bringing together the public, education and research and private sector stakeholders to support implementation of the public sector ICT agenda for service delivery in South Africa.
GovTech 2016 focused on "How Technology Improves Service Delivery for Citizen Empowerment" to motivate participants to consider capital and intellectual investment in research and development to produce and showcase technologies that cut across the government sectors and are essential in helping the country and the government to plan and deliver services which impact on the quality of life of citizens.
Prof Darelle van Greunen, Centre for Community Technologies, Nelson Mandela University presented mHealth4Afrika during Session 3 "ICT for Healthcare - Improving health, connecting people" at 14:00 on 01 November 2016. Prof Van Greunen provided insights into the objectives of mHealth4frika as a cross border intiative co-designing an open source, multilingual mHealth platform to support quality community-based maternal and Newborn healthcare delivery at clinic level in Africa, leveraging expertise from Europe and Africa.
mHealth4Afrika undertook an extensive needs assessment and baseline study in healthcare clinics in Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi and South Africa during Q4 2015, which provided the necessary inputs in the development of the alpha system. The alpha system is now being validated with the clinics in the four participating countries during November and December 2016 to provide inputs in the beta development phase.
mHealth4Afrika is focused on research and implementing the integration and adaptation of electronic helath records, sensors to capture reading, visualisation tools and a tablet friendly interface to support quality healthcare delivery in semi-urban, rural and deep rural clinics in Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi and South Africa. It is co-funded under Horizon 2020 by the European Commission under the ICT-39-2015 Call.
This presentation raised awareness among the public, private and education and research sectors in South Africa of the innovative work being undertaken by mHealth4Afrika on a cross border basis.