mHealth Service Totohealth Helps Save Young Children in Kenya
Alyson Wyers — February 10, 2015 — Social Good
References: totohealth.org & springwise
This mHealth service is using text messaging to improve health care in Kenya. Totohealth is a simple and free to use SMS-based service that aims to improve child mortality rates by saving the lives of those under the age of 5.
The social enterprise is directed at new and expecting parents to minimize developmental defects in newborn babies. The mHealth service works alongside healthcare facilities to offer important information twice a week to patients via text. The personalized messages are intended to offer accurate information, addressing myths, confirming appointment times and ensuring vaccinations occur. Translated into a number of different languages, the texts are kept in a database for the health service.
So far Totohealth has serviced more than 6000 parents in nine hospitals with over 133,000 messages.
The social enterprise is directed at new and expecting parents to minimize developmental defects in newborn babies. The mHealth service works alongside healthcare facilities to offer important information twice a week to patients via text. The personalized messages are intended to offer accurate information, addressing myths, confirming appointment times and ensuring vaccinations occur. Translated into a number of different languages, the texts are kept in a database for the health service.
So far Totohealth has serviced more than 6000 parents in nine hospitals with over 133,000 messages.
Trend Themes
1. Sms-based Healthcare - Disruptive innovation opportunity: Develop affordable and accessible SMS-based healthcare services to improve healthcare outcomes in underserved populations.
2. Personalized Information Delivery - Disruptive innovation opportunity: Create personalized information delivery systems that provide accurate and timely healthcare information to patients, improving patient outcomes and reducing healthcare costs.
3. Mhealth for Child Mortality Reduction - Disruptive innovation opportunity: Utilize mobile health technology (mHealth) to address child mortality rates by providing targeted health information and support to parents and caregivers.
Industry Implications
1. Mobile Health (mhealth) - Disruptive innovation opportunity: Develop mobile health technologies and services that leverage text messaging to improve healthcare access, education, and outcomes.
2. Healthcare Technology - Disruptive innovation opportunity: Innovate in healthcare technology sector to develop solutions that utilize SMS and personalized information delivery to enhance patient engagement and improve healthcare outcomes.
3. Public Health - Disruptive innovation opportunity: Apply mobile-based health interventions to address public health challenges, such as child mortality, and improve health outcomes in vulnerable populations.
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