Good morning
I trust you are all well!
I'm very glad to be able to join this forum. My fairly recent research (2020) picked up on a number of issues identified by the HIFA initiative related to informal mHealth. I've not been able to follow up on them actively, but the questions that were raised have stayed with me. So I'm looking forward to contributing to discussions, and learning from others.
I studied the coordination of activities in Primary Health Clinics, including mHealth registrations. Registered nurses routinely delegated the registration of patients on a mobile app to non-clinical staff. Delegation not infrequently took place to staff who were on month-to-month contracts, or simply unpaid volunteers.
This registration took place on personal mobile devices at no cost to themselves (a government sponsored number), which is not informal mHealth in itself. However this registration was time consuming, and often these staff worked outside routine office hours, and sometimes on a completely unpaid basis, because of a sense of obligation to the community.
This raised questions for me of the importance of informal obligation, and personal commitment under conditions of precarity, that are often unrecognised in formal mHealth and broader health systems initiatives. Since global funding for health care initiatives has recently been drastically cut, I believe that recognising and supporting the informal contributions of health workers is particularly timely and important.
I'm also glad to see the range of other initiatives being taken in the health information space, and look forward to participating in this forum
Kind regards
Brendon Wolff-Piggott
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Brendon Wolffpiggott
Research Associate
Gordon Institute of Business Science, University of Pretoria
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Email: wolffpiggottb@gibs.co.za
Web: www.gibs.co.za.
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HIFA profile: Brendon Wolff-Piggott is a Research Associate at GIBS Business School, in South Africa. Professional interests: Telehealth; Digital Health; Artificial Intelligence; Primary Health Care; and Voluntary Labour. Email: wolffpiggottb AT gibs.co.za