Copyright © 2015 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. Unauthorized reproduction of this article is prohibited. C URRENT O PINION Mobile health applications for HIV prevention and care in Africa Jamie I. Forrest a,b , Matthew Wiens a,b , Steve Kanters a,b , Sabin Nsanzimana c,d , Richard T. Lester e , and Edward J. Mills a,f Purpose of review More people have mobile phones in Africa than at any point in history. Mobile health (m-health), the use of mobile phones to support the delivery of health services, has expanded in recent years. Several models have been proposed for conceptualizing m-health in the fields of maternal–child health and chronic diseases. We conducted a literature review of m-health interventions for HIV prevention and care in African countries and present the findings in the context of a simplified framework. Recent findings Our review identified applications of m-health for HIV prevention and care categorized by the following three themes: patient-care focused applications, such as health behavior change, health system-focused applications, such as reporting and data collection, and population health-focused applications, including HIV awareness and testing campaigns. Summary The potential for m-health in Africa is numerous and should not be limited only to direct patient-care focused applications. Although the use of smart phone technology is on the rise in Africa, text messaging remains the primary mode of delivering m-health interventions. The rate at which mobile phone technologies are being adopted may outpace the rate of evaluation. Other methods of evaluation should be considered beyond only randomized-controlled trials. Keywords Africa, HIV, m-health, mobile health, SMS INTRODUCTION Six billion of the world’s seven billion people now have a mobile phone subscription [1]. The global proliferation of mobile phone use in recent years has largely been driven by a rapid uptake in low-income and middle-income countries. In 2002, roughly one- in-ten people in Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, and Ghana had a mobile phone subscription; today this has risen to over 80% [2]. Mobile phone ownership is now as common in South Africa and Nigeria as it is in the USA [2]. Talking and text messaging (SMS) remains the primary use of mobile technology in many developing countries, but a small yet growing proportion of users are now using mobile devices capable of accessing the Internet. With substantial growth in the number of mobile phone users, researchers and health prac- titioners have become increasingly interested in the field of mobile health, or m-health, broadly defined as the use of mobile phone technology to improve the delivery of health services. M-health offers particular promise for delivering interventions to reduce morbidity and mortality and to improve quality of life in resource-constrained settings. There has been considerable interest in m-health to support the delivery of HIV care and prevention services because much of the global burden of HIV exists in settings experiencing a rapid uptake in mobile phone use. a Global Evaluative Sciences, b School of Population and Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, c Rwanda Biomedical Center, Kigali, Rwanda, d Basel Institute for Clinical Epidemiology & Biostatistics and Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, University of Basal, Basal, Switzerland, e Department of Medi- cine, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada and f School of Public Health and Community Medicine, University of Rwanda, Kigali, Rwanda Correspondence to Jamie Forrest, Global Evaluative Sciences, 302- 1505W 2nd Avenue, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6H 3Y4. Tel: +1 604 336 3050; fax: +1 604 608 5583; e-mail: jforrest@geshealth.com Curr Opin HIV AIDS 2015, 10:000–000 DOI:10.1097/COH.0000000000000198 1746-630X Copyright ß 2015 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved. www.co-hivandaids.com REVIEW