Mobile phone penetration rates have reached 63% in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and are projected to pass 70% by 2013. In SSA,\r\nmillions of people who never used traditional landlines now use mobile phones on a regular basis. Mobile health, or mHealth, is\r\nthe utilization of short messaging service (SMS), wireless data transmission, voice calling, and smartphone applications to transmit\r\nhealth-related information or direct care. This systematic review analyzes and summarizes key articles from the current body of\r\npeer-reviewed literature on PubMed on the topic of mHealth in SSA. Studies included in the review demonstrate that mHealth can\r\nimprove and reduce the cost of patient monitoring, medication adherence, and healthcare worker communication, especially in\r\nrural areas. mHealth has also shown initial promise in emergency and disaster response, helping standardize, store, analyze, and\r\nshare patient information. Challenges for mHealth implementation in SSA include operating costs, knowledge, infrastructure, and\r\npolicy among many others. Further studies of the effectiveness ofmHealth interventions are being hindered by similar factors aswell\r\nas a lack of standardization in study design.Overall, the current evidence is not strong enough towarrant large-scale implementation\r\nof existingmHealth interventions in SSA, but rapid progress of both infrastructure andmHealth-related research in the region could\r\njustify scale-up of the most promising programs in the near future.
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