Report
The Lancet Infectious Diseases reported on the launch of the mHealth Alliance, a partnership between the Rockefeller Foundation, the UN Foundation and the Vodafone Foundation formed at the 2009 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona to coordinate mobile health projects, national governments and international agencies. Early Alliance projects included DataDyne.org’s open-source EpiSurveyor tool, which uses PDAs to collect public health data starting with measles immunisation coverage and was set to expand from pilots in Kenya and Zambia to 22 sub-Saharan African countries by the end of 2009, and Text to Change, a Dutch NGO whose SMS quizzes on HIV/AIDS in Uganda, rewarded with free airtime and handsets, were linked to a 40% rise in HIV testing, with experts quoted saying the next challenge was moving such pilots to national scale and building interoperable systems rather than a ‘mishmash of incompatible efforts’.