2017 ICT4D Conference

A common goal of mHealth interventions is to achieve some level of scale. Despite this, to date very few mHealth interventions have achieved any kind of meaningful scale. This failure to achieve meaningful scale means that there is a gap in the sector’s collective knowledge of what is involved in the successful scale up of a mHealth intervention.



Dimagi is currently a leader the mHealth and ICT4D sector in realizing the goal to scale projects to large user bases. Dimagi is actively working with Indian and other governments on a range of national scale projects, equipping 10s of thousands of frontline workers with mobile job aids, in India, Myanmar, and other countries globally. The shared learnings from these projects finally shed light on the method and the challenges involved in deploying a mHealth solution at scale.



In this presentation, Dimagi’s Lily Olson will describe the process of designing and implementing a national scale mHealth intervention. Participants will learn about the unique considerations involved in implementing at mHealth at scale, including the process of going from pilot to scale. The presentation will explore the enormous challenges involved in deploying a mHealth project at scale such as how pilot interventions evolve for scale up, lessons learned in aligning the large number of partners necessary to enable scale up, the close collaboration with government at the central, state and local level, building mHealth training capacity, aligning an intervention with national policy, collaboration opportunities with mobile device manufacturers, and developing an app appropriate for users across diverse geographies.