Maternal-newborn mHealth Initiative - MMI

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A leading initiative of the mHealth Alliance (mHA), MMI seeks to reduce maternal and newborn mortality through the power of modern information and communications technologies (ICTs), especially mobile.  

Spotlight on Maternal and Newborn Health

Every year, around 343,000 women die as a direct result of childbirth. Pregnancy related mortality extends much further—there are 4 million stillbirths, 3 million early neonatal deaths, and about 7.3 million pregnancy related deaths caused every year by maternal morbidity and improper care during childbirth. These deaths can be prevented.

By improving in country access to family planning, skilled care during pregnancy and childbirth, and emergency obstetric care and newborn care (EmOC), the status of maternal health—and the overall health system—can be strengthened and extended to all populations.

The Mobile Solution

With over 5 billion mobile subscribers worldwide, mobile networks and devices are almost everywhere, providing viable pathways for delivering critical information and supporting women and providers’ needs in a timely and efficient manner.

Leveraging the power and ubiquity of mobile networks and devices, MMI works to improve maternal and newborn health outcomes through mHealth: the application of mobile technologies.

From aiding front line healthcare workers to diagnose signs and symptoms of complications, to facilitating cost coverage and transportation to health care facilities, mHealth solutions have the potential to dramatically increase access to proper health care and save lives of mothers and newborns.

                                                                                                    Credit: UNICEF

MMI and partners will work together to help achieve the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5—to improve child and maternal health outcomes, and help strengthen health systems overall. We’re focused on the following strategies to achieve these goals:
 
Engage and Inform Key Players to Advance Health Outcomes
 
As a first step, MMI is creating a dynamic repository of projects on HUB, or www.healthunbound.org, to reduce the fragmentation and duplication of efforts among maternal-newborn mHealth projects throughout the world.   
 
HUB will facilitate sharing information, knowledge, and resources between various sectors on health systems.  HUB will also provide the data and case studies needed to inspire ongoing innovation and promote national scalability of existing pilot projects.  Additionally, MMI will facilitate informational classes both online and in the field about the potential of innovation for the Maternal-newborn health (MNH) field.  
 

Foster Collaboration for the Maternal-newborn mHealth Community

MMI will unite modern ICTs, especially mobile, with the expertise of maternal, newborn and child health practitioners.  By facilitating the formation of an engaged community, MMI will be able to further critical discussions regarding best practices of maternal-newborn mHealth projects, reduce fragmentation of efforts, and promote national scalability of existing pilot projects.

Innovative solutions are only as useful as the substantive requirements and expertise on which they are based, thus MMI is convening working groups to explore key enabling issue areas.  MMI can provide the information and awareness necessary to build effective collaborations between the MNH and ICT actors to accelerate the spread and impact of mobile health.

Provide Thought Leadership

MMI is driving thought leadership surrounding the best practices and technology architecture to enable interventions within the MNH field to come to scale, as well as interact with other enabling factors, such as mFinance, insurance, and improved monitoring and evaluation practices.

Support MMI

  • Join the community and discussion of the MMI on HUB at www.healthunbound.org and in person at our workshop and educational events.
  • Become a project partner and work with the mHA through networking on projects within the MNH space.
  • Add your project to the dynamic repository of all eHealth and mHealth projects in the MNH field so we can learn what exists, what works, and what still needs to be developed.