Digitalizing Community Health

Through the study of ‘Motech’—a global mHealth programme on maternal health implemented in Ghana and India—this chapter offers the first analysis of the use of mobile phones as a tool in such programmes. This chapter focuses on the particular role of community health workers in establishing this programme. It questions the competing strategies to enhance or substitute these workers that are linked to the expansion of these new technical artefacts. This vision—of the health worker assisted by the mobile—is twofold: on the one hand, it would make the health worker efficient and omniscient; on the other hand, it calls into question the knowledge of health workers and their autonomy through an automated system of communication. This research provides a better understanding of the special status of mobile phones and mHealth applications for community health workers and how their use changes the practice of community health.