The recent Ebola outbreak reminds us that supporting frontline health workers is vital and we can no longer wait. There is a critical need to establish a more robust communications and data collection system between health workers and their supervisors as they address priority health needs. Equipping health workers with the right kind of information about the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease will enable them to support their communities to fight back against endemic and epidemic diseases. Information is power and finding the fastest and most efficient ways to disseminate this information is key.

mHero - Health Worker Electronic Response and Outreach – is one way to harness the well-known power of mobile technology to reach frontline health workers. mHero, currently under rapid development with support from a consortium of partners including the UNICEF Global Centre for Innovations, USAID, IntraHealth, ThoughtWorks, and Jembi Health Systems is a free SMS mobile phone based communications system between MoH staff, health workers, and community health workers. By supporting the interoperability of HRIS systems, such as IntraHealth’s iHRIS, with UNICEF’s RapidPRO, and utilizing the OpenHIE architecture, the platform can immediately use the health workforce data to target specific communications based on cadre, location, and other information. Communications, which can be triggered both centrally and locally, go far beyond traditional “message blasts” offered by many technology vendors. Real-time monitoring, complex multi-path surveys, monitoring and detailed analysis can be conducted with ease. Furthermore, IVR mLearning approaches will take knowledge delivery one-step beyond SMS with higher content limits and addressing the literacy and language divides through spoken language.