Digital Health

What is it?

© 2016 Pritha Chakraborty, Courtesy of Photoshare

Digital health is the use of mobile phones and other wireless technology to promote health objectives. Digital health approaches have been used to improve the quality of service delivery, monitor stockouts, manage logistics, provide supportive supervision to community health workers, improve clinical knowledge, and more. These approaches can also create demand and facilitate access to sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services for urban youth.

What Are the Benefits?

• Access to mobile phones is increasing. Mobile phones have changed the way that young people communicate and get information. The evidence shows that digital health interventions are increasing youth’s access to SRH information and services in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).
• Evidence is emerging that mobile phones are an effective tool in reaching youth, increasing their knowledge, and changing their behaviors.
• Youth can often access digital health initiatives anonymously, which can be important for those living in environments where SRH information and services are taboo and those who may feel fear or embarrassment talking about SRH issues publicly.
• Mobile phones can help reach populations with limited mobility, visibility, and agency, like girls who are married, out-of-school youth, or migrant girls.

How to Implement?

What Is the Evidence?

• In Kenya, The SRHR Alliance supports the Youth for Life website, which provides SRHR information and links young people to facilities that offer youth-friendly services. The platform also features an SMS service to disseminate information and promote discussion about topical issues. A five-month study of the platform showed that digital platforms are effective in reaching adolescents and youth with information and referring them to appropriate services (96% of the study’s sample). The platform’s ease of use, variety of content, convenience, confidentiality, and interactive nature were credited with its success (1st Adolescent Health Symposium, 2015).
• In Madagascar, UNFPA partnered with Marie Stopes and Sisal to use mobile phones to provide free information and payment vouchers through SMS. During the project, peer educators reached out to young people with SRHR information, distributed e-vouchers, and made referrals to clinics. Peer educators even reached young people who did not have access to a mobile phone by using their own phones to redeem an e-voucher. Over 18 months, approximately 2,000 of the 2,714 young women who were given e-vouchers for free services used them, and an estimated 1,900 pregnancies were avoided.
• Started in Nigeria, Learning about Living provides a question-and-answer service via SMS. The project allows young people to text questions they have about SRHR to trained counselors. The counselors aim to respond within 24 hours, but often reply within six hours. With the project’s expansion to Senegal, Morocco, Egypt, and Cambodia, the communication channels have expanded as well to include email and Facebook. In Cambodia, the project supplemented its activities with a youth-developed podcast consisting of short episodes that clients receive either through a direct call to their phone or through an on-demand IVR call-in service. During the first three years of activities in Senegal, the project answered approximately 250,000 SMS texts sent by more than 67,000 individual users.
• In Kenya, LVCT Health’s One2One Integrated Digital Platform (OIDP) seeks to increase young people’s knowledge of SRHR, HIV, and gender-based violence, and to provide space for sharing among adolescents and youth. The project includes a hotline; a SMS service; and online platforms, including a website, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, and YouTube. The platform also gives users an opportunity to chat with a professional counselor, links adolescents to services, and reminds patients of upcoming appointments.