IST-Africa 2012 Conference Proceedings Paul Cunningham and Miriam Cunningham (Eds) IIMC International Information Management Corporation, 2012 ISBN: 978-1-905824-34-2 Copyright © 2012 The authors www.IST-Africa.org/Conference2012 Page 1 of 9 mHealth in Senegal: The Voices project Emmanuelle BOYER 1 , Ralph ANKRI 1 , Moustafa ZOUINAR 1, David BLAISONNEAU 1 , Morgan RICHOMME 1 , Christophe LONGUET 2 1 FRANCE TELECOM /ORANGE LABS, 38/40 Rue du General Leclerc ISSY Les MX, 92130 France, Tel: +0033145398870, Email: Ralph.ankri@orange.com 2 FONDATION MERIEUX, 17 Rue Bourgelat 69002 Lyon, France Tel: + +33 4 72 40 79 79, Email: christophe.longuet@fondation-merieux.org Abstract: This paper describes an ongoing mobile health (mHealth) pilot in Africa. This project is part of a larger European Commission (EC) funded project, VOICES, which explores the potential of mobile, wireless, web and speech technologies to improve social, health and rural development in African countries. The mHealth part of the project aims at investigating how mobile and speech technologies can strengthen epidemiological surveillance in Senegal. Four mHealth applications are being developed. One application deals with epidemiological data collection from peripheral biomedical laboratories, two applications aims at delivering educational content to laboratory technicians, and the last application has to do with providing them with expert support. Key Words: VOICES, mHealth, Mobile phone, Voice technologies, Senegal, Biomedical laboratories, Epidemiological surveillance, Medical training. 1. Introduction This paper presents the mHealth pilot of an ongoing European Commission funded project1 named VOICES (VOIce-based Community-cEntric mobile Services for social development2). MHealth refers to the use of mobile and wireless technologies to improve health systems. It is widely recognized as a strategic element for achieving health-related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in low and/or middle income countries (LMICs) an is being applied in diverse contexts such as patient monitoring, health surveys and patient data collection, epidemiological surveillance, health awareness raising, mobile telemedicine, public information campaigns among others [1, 2, 3]. The VOICES project, which involves 11 partners, aims at exploring the potential of using mobile phones and speech technology to improve social development in African countries (Mali and Senegal) in two domains: agriculture and health. The rationale of using speech technologies is that voice-based interfaces have been identified for their potential to increase access to information services in developing countries, particularly for illiterate people [1]. Another goal of the project is to build a toolbox for the development of voice services that will be made available to local communities and entrepreneurs as Open Source. As for the health pilot, the objective is to investigate how mobile and speech technologies may strengthen the Senegalese epidemiological surveillance system. This pilot involves an industrial partner (Orange), an academic one (ESMT), a French NGO (Fondation Mérieux) whose main mission is to strengthen local capacities in developing countries to reduce the impact of 1 The second pilot is agriculture in Mali, which is investigated by another team of the project. 2 For more information on the project see: http://www.mvoices.eu/