· health report · 2 min read
Community health apps + mobile technology
Community health apps are used by workers to advance a broad range of health aims throughout the globe, particularly maternal and child health, HIV/AIDS, and sexual and reproductive health. Most commonly, community health workers use mobile technology to collect field-based health data, receive alerts and reminders, facilitate health education sessions, and conduct person-to-person communication.
The following literature review of community health apps is compiled from this NCBI report. The research report reviews the use of mobile technology by community health workers. The goal is to identify opportunities and challenges for strengthening health systems in resource-constrained settings.
Introduction of Community Health Apps for Workers
In low-resource settings, community health workers are front line providers who shoulder the health service delivery burden. Increasingly, mobile technologies are developed, tested, and deployed with community health workers to facilitate tasks and improve outcomes.
We reviewed the evidence for the use of mobile technology by community health workers. We attempted to identify opportunities and challenges for strengthening health systems in resource-constrained settings.
Methods
Our team conducted a systematic review of peer-reviewed literature from health, medical, social science, and engineering databases, using PRISMA guidelines. We identified a total of 25 unique full-text research articles on community health workers. We also looked at their use of mobile technology for the delivery of health services.
Results from Community Health Apps Findings
Community health apps are used by workers to advance a broad range of health aims throughout the globe, particularly maternal and child health, HIV/AIDS, and sexual and reproductive health. Most commonly, community health workers use mobile technology to collect field-based health data, receive alerts and reminders, facilitate health education sessions, and conduct person-to-person communication.
Programmatic efforts to strengthen health service delivery focus on improving adherence to standards and guidelines, community education and training, and programmatic leadership and management practices. Those studies that evaluated program outcomes provided some evidence that mobile tools help community health workers to improve the quality of care provided, efficiency of services, and capacity for program monitoring.
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Interested in learning more from this NCBI report? Talk to our team about the benefits of implementing community health apps.