MobileActive.org

The Vodafone Health Debate series is part of our continuing commitment to thought leadership in healthcare. It brings together senior pharma, public and private health stakeholders to learn, share and debate on issues and new thinking brought forward by renowned thought leaders and industry experts. Our aim is to provide some evidence- based stimulus that will encourage all those working in the different areas of healthcare to consider the innovation opportunities that are now available to them.

We believe that real progress can only be initiated when all stakeholders look beyond traditional horizons and share ideas that challenge the status quo so that together we can identify new ways of addressing current issues. Regulatory complexity, financial constraints, entrenched infrastructures and poor investment in technology combined with a lack of understanding by technology providers has meant that digital innovation in healthcare has been slow to take hold.

However, given changing healthcare needs of an increasingly aging population and the challenges presented by the current economic crisis, there is renewed interest in the potential of mHealth and Internet solutions to help reduce costs, increase efficiencies and effectiveness. This paper explores the practical reasons behind the slower than expected adoption of digital health technologies and discusses experiences from other sectors that could potentially help create wide scale adoption.

Handheld computers have untapped potential to improve HIV/AIDS programs in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in the collection of survey data. We conducted an experiment in three neighborhoods of Luanda, Angola to assess the impact of the technology on people’s comfort and willingness to disclose sensitive personal information, such as sexual behavior.

Participants were asked about their HIV/AIDSrelated knowledge, attitudes, and practices by local interviewers using either handheld computers or paper surveys. T-tests showed no differences between participants’ self-reported comfort across handheld and paper conditions. However, participants in the handheld condition were more likely to give socially desirable responses to the sexual behavior questions than participants in the paper condition. These results suggest that using handheld computers in data collection in sub-Saharan Africa may lead to biased reports of HIV/AIDS-related risk behaviors.