Introduction to mHealth: Common mHealth Questions

This guide seeks to guide users through some of the most commonly asked questions about mHealth, and offers links to additional sources of information, such as articles, reports, websites, tools and manuals.

The guide was produced by the mHealth Expert Learning Program (mHELP), now known as HealthEnabled - a South Africa-based non profit organisation that helps national governments in low- and middle-income countries make short- and long-term decisions to integrate life-saving digital health solutions into their health systems.

The guide covers the following questions, including links to additional resources: 

1. What is mHealth and why is it so important?
2. How do I know if an mHealth solution is right for my project?
3. How can mHealth be used in health projects? What are the types of mHealth applications?
4. Where do I start to learn about mHealth? What if I don’t know anything?
5. How are the fields of mHealth, eHealth & information & communication technology related?
6. Where can I find evidence on what works?
7. Where can I go to see examples of projects that have an mHealth component?
8. I know a little bit, but how do I go about actually planning to use mHealth in my project?
9. Where can I see examples of mHealth content?
10. Where can I learn about mobile technologies?
11. Where can I learn about mobile data collection?
12. How should my organization develop content for our new Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (MNCH) mobile messaging project?
13. What is mobile behavior change communication (mBCC) and where can I go to learn more about it?
14. Is there information specific to mHealth applications for maternal, newborn and child health?
15. How much does mHealth cost?
16. What are the different types of mobile phones? What types of phones do CHWs and community members have?
17. In my project area, most of the population is illiterate. How can mHealth be used?
18. How can I ensure that gender is addressed in my mobile health project?
19. How are phones charged in low resource settings?
20. How do I get funding for my mHealth idea? Where do I search for funding opportunities?
21. What is open-source software, and is it free of charge?
22. What exactly is mobile money and how can it be used in health programs?
23. What is the mobile ecosystem that I hear about?
24. How do we ensure sustainability in mHealth?
25. What is human-centered design?
26. Are there guidebooks and lessons learned on planning and design of mHealth projects, now that I know the basic design principle? 
27. What is scale up of mHealth projects, and why is it important? Where can I find examples of mHealth projects that have scale up?
28. Why is there so much focus on interoperability in eHealth and mHealth, and what is the importance of standards?
29. What is data security and why is it important? 
30. What kinds of evaluation models are available for mHealth projects? What are we actually measuring?

Key Resources for mHealth