Senior Lecturer Institute of Healthcare Management Strathmore University Business School, Dr. Pratap Kumar, together with his colleagues at the University of Oxford and Kemri-Wellcome Trust Research Programme, co-authored the publication I’ve Got 99 Problems but a Phone Ain’t One; Electronic and Mobile Health in Low and Middle Income Countries. This publication made to cover page in the leading journal Archives of Disease in Childhood.

 

The publication focuses on challenges to electronic and mobile health (e-health and m-health) technologies and why technology-focused solutions are not having an impact. The title summarizes the issue: mobile phones are ubiquitous, but they are not creating the revolution in healthcare that was expected, highlighting that there are other challenges that need to be overcome before changes can be seen.

 

An example would be the huge human resource gaps in healthcare that technology alone cannot solve. It is also impractical to use computers or tablets every time a nurse, clinical officer or doctor sees a patient – it takes too long and is too expensive to be practical. The paper goes into some of these details and talks about some solutions the team is working on, that try to overcome these challenges.

 

The journal Archives of Disease in Childhood, is a leading journal for childhood diseases co-owned by the British Medical Journal (BMJ) and the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health. 

 

Dr. Pratap and team’s article was the most downloaded article from the journal in June and continues to attract a lot of interest. To make cover of a journal like this means that the editors want to not only highlight the article, and increase the impact factor of the journal, it is recognition that the work is both important and of interest to the audience of the journal.

 

All work mentioned in the article are projects that are currently ongoing in Kenya, led by Dr. Pratap and his collaborators. Any interested parties in electronic or mobile health solutions, either as developers or users should get in touch with Dr. Pratap.

 

To access the pdf journal, click here.