title: Meeting community health worker needs for maternal health care service delivery using appropriate mobile technologies in Ethiopia.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Mobile health applications are complex interventions that essentially require changes to the behavior of health care professionals who will use them and changes to systems or processes in delivery of care. Our aim has been to meet the technical needs of Health Extension Workers (HEWs) and midwives for maternal health using appropriate mobile technologies tools.
  
  
  METHODS
  We have developed and evaluated a set of appropriate smartphone health applications using open source components, including a local language adapted data collection tool, health worker and manager user-friendly dashboard analytics and maternal-newborn protocols. This is an eighteen month follow-up of an ongoing observational research study in the northern of Ethiopia involving two districts, twenty HEWs, and twelve midwives.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Most health workers rapidly learned how to use and became comfortable with the touch screen devices so only limited technical support was needed. Unrestricted use of smartphones generated a strong sense of ownership and empowerment among the health workers. Ownership of the phones was a strong motivator for the health workers, who recognised the value and usefulness of the devices, so took care to look after them. A low level of smartphones breakage (8.3%,3 from 36) and loss (2.7%) were reported. Each health worker made an average of 160 mins of voice calls and downloaded 27Mb of data per month, however, we found very low usage of short message service (less than 3 per month).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Although it is too early to show a direct link between mobile technologies and health outcomes, mobile technologies allow health managers to more quickly and reliably have access to data which can help identify where there issues in the service delivery. Achieving a strong sense of ownership and empowerment among health workers is a prerequisite for a successful introduction of any mobile health program.
authors.affiliation: Digital Campus, Winchester, United Kingdom ; Department of Surgery, College of Health Sciences, University of Alcalá, Madrid, Spain.
authors.forename: Alex
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Little
authors.forename: Araya
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Medhanyie
authors.forename: Henock
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Yebyo
authors.forename: Mark
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Spigt
authors.forename: Geert-Jan
authors.initials: GJ
authors.lastname: Dinant
authors.forename: Roman
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Blanco
mesh_terms: D040421:Cell Phone / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D003150:Community Health Workers; D003625:Data Collection / Q000379:methods; D003695:Delivery of Health Care / Q000379:methods*; D005002:Ethiopia; D006282:Health Personnel; D006801:Humans; D008427:Maternal Health Services / Q000379:methods*; D008429:Maternal Welfare; D008880:Midwifery; D017216:Telemedicine / Q000379:methods; D060145:Text Messaging / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*