Delivery of multilingual mHealth service for control of TB/HIV in developing countries Aishwarya Bakshi Junhua Li Pradeep Ray ApuHC, UNSW aishwarya.bakshi@student.unsw.edu.au junhua.li@student.unsw.edu.au p.ray@unsw.edu.au Padmanesan Narasimhan School of Public Health and Community Medicine,UNSW padmanesan@gmail.com Kasturi Bakshi Kalyani Institute for Study, Planning and Action for Rural Change bakshijhilik@gmail.com Abstract A large number of people living with Tuberculosis/HIV fail treatment and develop resistance to drugs as they fail to maintain proper drug adherence. With the growing crisis of inadequate healthcare workforce in developing countries, mHealth services (healthcare using mobile communication technologies) are gaining support as an effective tool to handle the situation, especially where technological and human resources are limited. This paper illustrates the delivery of one such service where a simple and inexpensive SMS-based mHealth application can e used to assist in TB/HIV treatment 1. Introduction Tuberculosis (TB) is a potentially life threatening but curable disease which affects one third of the world‘s total population, primarily in developing countries. Global annual incidence of TB is estimated at 9.1 million cases, out of which 1.9 million cases, i.e. nearly one-fifth the global incidence, are from India [1]. Controlling TB in India is a challenge due to the shortage of human resources in the overburdened healthcare system [2]. This disease also affects economic development of the country, incurring US $3 billion in indirect costs and US $300 million in direct costs [3]. Further complications arise due to the emergence and spread of drug resistant TB and also Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) co- infection. On the other hand, due to the meteoric rise in the usage of mobile phones, even amongst the rural population, outreach to patients and access to information has never been easier. According to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), by the end of March 2010 there were 584.32 million mobile phone users in the country (TRAI, 2010).To overcome the shortage of healthcare workers and improve the access to health care, mobile phones can be of great value for remote monitoring and information dissemination. E-Health is the delivery or facilitation of health services and information through the Internet, telecommunications and related technologies [4]. e- Health is concerned with the application of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in healthcare. e-Health can play a vital role in extending healthcare to remote populations in the world where human resources are lacking, utilizing the rapid proliferation of mobile phones (World Health Organisation, 2005). With mobile (including satellite) technologies, healthcare and services can even be provided in remote settings where conventional telecommunication networks are either not available or have been disrupted. Mobile Health (mHealth) is a component of eHealth. WHO Global Observatory of eHealth defines mHealth as medical and public health practice supported by mobile devices such as mobile phones, monitoring devices, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and other wireless devices [5]. With the global proliferation of mobile phone services, it is now possible to develop and deploy mHealth services for reaching healthcare particularly in developing countries [6]. The world of information technology (IT) is now moving towards the concept of Software as a Service (SaaS) and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) that defines IT services (including mHealth) as a service rather than a product. This paper will explore one such service where a simple and inexpensive multilingual mHealth application can be used to facilitate TB/HIV treatment. The system will primarily use the Short Message Service (SMS) facility available in nearly all mobile phones and can be used in resource limited settings as it is cost effective. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. The background information and motivation to develop the mHealth system is provided in section 2. In section 3 we discuss the potential of mHealth in improving healthcare systems. In section 4 the methodology 2012 45th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences 978-0-7695-4525-7/12 $26.00 © 2012 IEEE DOI 10.1109/HICSS.2012.196 925