Lebanon: Teams launch mHealth app

The mHealth phase of the NCD study began in January 2016 in all participating clinics. Together with teams from MIT-Sana and Johns Hopkins, IOM conducted clinic visits during which hardware was installed and the team held meetings with health care providers and clinic managers to introduce the mhealth application.

A key component of the mHealth application is the integration of clinical management guidelines for hypertension and type II diabetes which are incorporated and serve as a decision support tool for providers. In addition to an abbreviated health record that is provided in paper or text message format, patients received customized printouts with information on prescribed medications and healthy lifestyle behaviors.

A total of 60 health providers (38 doctors and 22 nurses) from the three regions including the Bekaa valley, Beirut/Mt Lebanon and Southern Lebanon, attended the training in early February. The training also served as an opportunity to collect feedback and make preliminary adjustments to the application.

Over the remainder of the mHealth implementation period, feedback will continuously be collected from all users regarding technical problems, practicality and feasibility, and suggestions for layout and/or content improvements. The mhealth application will be tested over a six month period, from February to July this year, after which results of both NCD guidelines and mHealth components will be analyzed.