Using mobile technology to improve the health of pregnant women, newborns and infants at national scale
Main beneficiary country:South Africa
South African National Department of Health
South African National Department of Health (NDOH) - Project and Strategy Lead.
USAID, CDC, UNICEF, J&J, Elma Foundation, CDC & Discovery Foundation as funders.
Baby Center for expert content partner, and Jembi Health Systems, Healthenabled, WRHI , Praekelt.org and HISP for technical implementation partners.
Measure Evaluation SIFSA as operational strengthening partner, and University of Stellenbosch and University of Western Cape for Monitoring and Evaluation Mobile Network Operators have discounted their services and also provide some technical support.
Sector: Organizational: Communities, public authorities, NGOs, associations, foundations, etc.
Country of origin: South Africa
Healthcare themes targeted
Stage of development:
Area where initiative is utilised
Initiative start date
Initiative end date
Financing method
Economic model(s)
While South Africa has cut down maternal deaths since 2009, its current rate of 269 per 100 000 in 2014 is very far from meeting the international commitment to cut maternal mortality to 38 deaths per 100,000 births by 2015 as part of the global Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Innovative efforts are essential to get back on track.
MomConnect is integrated into the central health information systems to present decision-makers with control interfaces and dashboards to ensure that feedback from mothers reaches the highest levels of government. Available in eleven languages and multiple mobile channels, MomConnect can be accessed by a wide range of pregnant women and mothers throughout the diverse country of South Africa. Feedback loops are integrated within the platform to improve service delivery at critical points.
Launched in August 2014, MomConnect is a South African National Department of Health (NDOH) initiative that uses mobile technology to improve the health of pregnant women, newborns and infants at national scale. Through the platform, every pregnant woman in South Africa can register to receive free, informative, stage-based messaging for her pregnancy up to the first year of her baby’s life. MomConnect also provides access to an SMS Helpdesk and the ability for women to rate the service they receive at the clinic. Ratings and questions are sent directly to NDOH officials who respond to the queries and ensure that a high level of service is available at every clinic. Some of the key statistics of the programme are: 100%of Clinics in the Country are registering women 1.25 Million Women Registered 30% of women responded to Service Ratings Over 500,000 SMSs processed by the Helpdesk, approximately 1000 messages processed a day, currently Over 16,000 nurses who have been registered on the supporting NurseConnect programme Our platform uses multiple mobile channels, included USSD, SMS, and soon bots, to communicate with registered mothers. Data collected through these channels is then passed through a Health Information Exchange layer to the central DHIS2 system. The information and data is stored at the local level to ensure data privacy.
Health professional training - Information, education and communication for behaviour change (IEC)
1800000 Number of beneficiaries since launch
900000 Number of users per Year
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evaluated independently
Academic entities: Universities, research laboratories, etc.
Industrial: Startups, enterprises, etc.
Academic entities: Universities, research laboratories, etc.
Industrial: Startups, enterprises, etc.
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