Hui, Chi Yan and Abdulla, Adina and Ahmed, Zakiuddin and Goel, Himanshi and Habib, G. M. Monsur and Hock, Toh Teck and Khandakr, Parisa and Mahmood, Hana and Nautiyal, Animesh and Nurmansyah, Mulya and Panwar, Shweta and Patil, Rutuja and Rinawan, Fedri Ruluwedrata and Salim, Hani and Satav, Ashish and Shah, Jitendra Nandkumar and Shukla, Akshita and Tanim, Chowdhury Zabir Hossain and Balharry, Dominique and Pinnock, Hilary and Grp, RESPIRE (2022) Mapping national information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure to the requirements of potential digital health interventions in low- and middle-income countries. Journal of Global Health, 12. ISSN 2047-2978, DOI https://doi.org/10.7189/jogh.12.04094.
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
Background: Digital health can support health care in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs) by overcoming prob-lems of distance, poor infrastructure and the need to provide community practi-tioners with specialist support. We used five RESPIRE countries as exemplars (Ban-gladesh, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Paki-stan) to identify the digital health solu-tions that are valuable in their local setting, worked together with local clinicians and researchers to explore digital health pol-icy, electricity/ICT infrastructure, and socio-cultural factors influencing users' ability to access, adopt and utilise digital health.Methods: We adopted the Joanna Briggs Institute's scoping review protocol and fol-lowed the Cochrane Rapid Review method to accelerate the review process, using the Implementation and Operation of Mobile Health projects framework and The Ex-tended Technology Acceptance Model of Mobile Telephony to categorise the results. We conducted the review in four stages: (1) establishing value, (2) identifying digi-tal health policy, (3) searching for evidence of infrastructure, design, and end-user adoption, (4) local input to interpret rele-vance and adoption factors. We used open -source national/international statistics such as the World Health Organization, Interna-tional Telecommunication Union, Groupe Speciale Mobile, and local news/articles/ government statistics to scope the current status, and systematically searched five da-tabases for locally relevant exemplars. Results: We found 118 studies (2015-2021) and 114 supplementary online news articles and national statistics. Digital health policy was available in all countries, but scarce skilled labour, lack of legislation/ interoperability support, and interrupted electricity and internet services were limitations. Older patients, women and those living in rural areas were least likely to have access to ICT infrastructure. Renewable energy has potential in enabling digital health care. Low usage mobile data and voice service packages are relatively affordable options for mHealth in the five countries. Conclusions: Effective implementation of digital health technologies requires a supportive policy, stable electricity infrastructures, affordable mobile internet service, and good understanding of the socio-eco-nomic context in order to tailor the intervention such that it functional, accessible, feasible, user-friendly and trusted by the target users. We suggest a checklist of contextual factors that developers of digital health initiatives in LMICs should consider at an early stage in the development process.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Funders: | UK National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) (Global Health Research Unit on Respiratory Health (RESPIRE)) using UK aid from the UK Government, Scottish Funding Council Global Challenges Research Fund institutional grant [Grant No: 16/136/109] |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | Mobile service; User acceptance; System; Adoption |
| Subjects: | R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine |
| Divisions: | Faculty of Medicine |
| Depositing User: | Ms. Juhaida Abd Rahim |
| Date Deposited: | 03 Nov 2025 12:47 |
| Last Modified: | 03 Nov 2025 12:47 |
| URI: | http://eprints.um.edu.my/id/eprint/40472 |
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