The ability to send a simple text message is more or less taken for granted in many parts of the world. But not all of them. 

An extended session at this year's mHealth Summit aims to bridge that gap between those who can and those who can't.

Titled “A Trifecta for mHealth Implementation – Tools for mHealth Programs Focusing on Low- and Middle-Income Countries,” the session will run from 2:30-6 p.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 11, during the 2013 mHealth Summit at the Gaylord National Resort and Conference Center in National Harbor, Md. Conducted by the mHealth Working Group, it will focus on how text messaging capabilities can be developed and put to use for healthcare services.

According to Laura Raney, co-founder and co-chair of the mHealth Working Group and one of the session’s organizers, there are a number of reasons why mobile health programs aren’t as ubiquitous as they should be in less developed parts of the world. For starters, she said, “mobile services are still limited in many rural areas, though lots of people have cell phones.”

Moreover, there’s the high cost of voice and text services, varying rates of literacy levels – both in terms of reading and when it comes to using technology – and the impact of limited electrical services for purposes of re-charging equipment.

Finally, said Raney, who is senior technical officer at fhi360, a nonprofit human development organization, there are still gender inequities in cellphone ownership in many developing countries, a situation that can lead to privacy and information security issues given that many mHealth programs in developing countries are focused on women’s health and family planning. 

Raney said the session will offer a number of speakers who will talk about their specific mHealth projects, explaining how they used a template developed by fhi360 that consists of steps dubbed “Planning,” “Design and Build,” “Monitor and Evaluate” and “Scale-up and Sustain.”

Among the programs to be discussed at the session are the ReMiND Project, a program based in India that is run by the Catholic Relief Services and uses mobile technology to help local healthcare workers manage their workloads while also improving the quality of their counseling; and Project Mwana, which is run by UNICEF and uses text services to expedite the reporting of HIV test results for infants in Uganda and Zambia.

Another program to be highlighted in the session is fhi360’s Mobile 4 Reproductive Health (m4RH) program. According to Kelly L’Engle, PhD, a behavioral scientist with fhi360, the program was started in 2009 with USAID funding, tested and then scaled up in Kenya and Tanzania.

With the goal of using text services to deliver interactive, menu-based family planning information, the program is now ramping up in Rwanda with a specific focus on youth.

While the program descriptions will constitute the core of the extended session, Raney sees an opportunity to share experiences. She said that while much work has been done on the development of best practices for these kinds of mHealth programs, “we really want to pull information from the people in the audience from which everyone can benefit.”