HealthMessenger: An e-health service to support ICT deployments in poor areas

Abstract

Development and implementation of appropriate e-services as well as revenue generation are key to deploying and sustaining ICT installations in poor areas in developing countries. The area of e-Health is a promising area for e-Services that are important to populations in poor areas and health service organisations that are already spending money on different health initiatives in these areas. This paper discusses an e-Health service that facilitates dissemination of health information to people living in poor areas and that is subsequently used to generate revenue to support deployment and development of ICT in the areas. The tool was developed within the context of the Siyakhula Living Lab (SLL), a multi-stakeholder operation that promotes ICT for Development in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. Creation of health content for the e-health service and its subsequent consumption happen in two different environments from a technological and social point of view. To enable this to happen, the e-service comprises two component applications that run in a peer-to-peer fashion. The component that is used to disseminate content for end-user consumption is called the HealthMessenger. The HealthMessenger is hosted on an environment called TeleWeaver, an application integration platform developed within the SLL to host software applications targeting people living in poor areas. The platform is customised to support services with a revenue generation component.