Innovative Technologies

Innovative technologies like mobile devices, electronic medical records, and interventions based on human performance technology are increasingly being deployed to respond to health care delivery challenges in low-resource settings. To ensure that technologies achieve the greatest impact, they must be designed to respond to important system gaps and their introduction should be grounded in strategies that strengthen essential health system functions like health information systems, service delivery, and provider performance.

Improvement Framework for Leveraging mHealth and eHealth to Strengthen Systems

The USAID ASSIST Project is testing and evaluating how mHealth and eHealth can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of care and support processes, enhance the performance of human resources for health, and improve coordination and communication between health system levels and with clients.  The project’s Framework for Leveraging mHealth and eHealth to Strengthen Health Systems highlights critical system and quality gaps and describes how improvement science can enhance the development and testing of technologies to improve information systems and data, health workforce management, service delivery, and supply chain management
Resource September 17, 2014

Virtual Collaboratives to Improve Maternal and Child Health

PDF icon Colaborativos virtuales para mejorar la salud materno infantil

Modern quality improvement approaches offer methods to overcome common barriers related to quality of care, including in the context of weak health systems that face severe limitations in terms of materials and and human resources. Building on URC's extensive experience leading collaborates, the USAID ASSIST Project has proposed virtual improvement collaboratives as an innovative method to improve the quality of health services and share best practices in newborn health in Latin America.

Event Monday, April 7, 2014 - 09:00 to Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - 05:00

mHealth for Maternal Health Meeting: Bridging the Gaps

Boston, MA

The Maternal Health Task Force (MHTF), in collaboration with Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the World Health Organization, is convening a technical meeting on mHealth for maternal health: how it can be applied, who can use it, and to what effect it is needed. The meeting brings together a diverse group that includes representatives from high-, middle- and low-income countries who are  researchers, program implementers, and evaluators from both the maternal health and mHealth communities.

Resource March 20, 2014

Leveraging mHealth to Strengthen Health Systems and Improve Care

PDF icon Leveraging mHealth to Strengthen Health Systems and Improve Care

Over the last fifteen years, mobile and electronic technologies have dramatically changed the health sector landscape. When used appropriately, mHealth technologies can help strengthen essential system functions as part of broader system strengthening efforts to improve quality of care and health outcomes. As health systems extend coverage of essential services in the era of Universal Health Coverage (UHC), it is imperative to optimize the design and use of mHealth technologies that can best augment health system and service delivery improvement efforts.

Event Friday, January 31, 2014 - 09:00

Bridging the Gaps: Leveraging m/eHealth to Achieve Strong Health Systems and High Quality Care in Low-Resource Settings

Washington, DC

This technical working group meeting was convened by the USAID ASSIST Project with key mHealth and eHealth stakeholders and experts for the purpose of reviewing a working framework for selecting technological solutions that can help bridge quality and systems gaps to improve health care in resource-limited settings.  The meeting also sought to build consensus on established, emerging, and needed mHealth and eHealth solutions that best address critical quality and systems gaps in low-resource settings and identify areas of collaboration for implementation and research.

Blog post March 14, 2014

The Potential of m/eHealth to Improve Systems, Care, and Gender Relations

Elizabeth Romanoff Silva

USAID ASSIST Project/WI-HER

“Every system is perfectly designed to achieve exactly the results it achieves.” USAID Applying Science to Strengthen and Improve Systems (ASSIST) Deputy Director Kathleen Hill shared this quote from Deming with an audience of more than 40 leading experts in technology, health care, and international development that gathered on January 31st in Washington, D.C. for an m/eHealth Health System Strengthening technical working group meeting.

Resource March 10, 2014

Computer-based Training for Tuberculosis Education in Indonesia

To support the National Tuberculosis Program (NTP) of Indonesia in its efforts to train private health care practitioners in tuberculosis (TB) directly observed treatment, the USAID Health Care Improvement Project was asked by USAID to update and adapt for Indonesia a computer-based training product that had previously been developed for Bolivia by the USAID-funded Quality Assurance Project.

Resource March 10, 2014

Care That Counts eLearning Course for Quality Improvement in Programs for Vulnerable Children

This eLearning course is designed for in-country Ministry personnel, international non-governmental organizations (NGO), national NGOs, USAID Mission staff, or anyone interested in learning more about using quality improvement principles to strengthen programs for vulnerable children. This course can also be used to educate and advocate for quality improvement in programming for vulnerable children.

Resource March 2, 2014

Reminders

The major assumption underlying reminder interventions is that provider forgetfulness and/or lack of awareness are major barriers to performance in accordance with standards, as opposed to deficiency in knowledge or skill. Reminders consist of prompts either before or during a patient encounter that suggest a specific behavior should or should not be performed.

Resource March 12, 2012

Tuberculosis Diagnosis and Treatment Computer-based Training Package for Indonesia

PDF icon indonesia_tb-cbt_final_report_mar12.pdf

This final report details the technical assistance that the USAID Health Care Improvement Project (HCI) provided the National Tuberculosis Program (NTP) and other professional associations in Indonesia to develop and disseminate tuberculosis (TB) CD-Rom and computer-based training packages to health practitioners, particularly private providers. The objective of the computer-based training on TB was to instruct health practitioners and health workers from private, public and non-governmental sub-sectors in the modern treatment of TB based on the STOP TB Strategy.

Resource February 24, 2009

The use and effect of computer-based training in health care: What do we know?

PDF icon computer-based_training.pdf

For the last decade, stand-alone training offered on computers has been used extensively in the US for training medical students and health providers. In many instances, health providers have demonstrated improved knowledge scores upon completing computer-based tutorials, and when compared with traditional facilitator-led training, computer-based training has yielded equal and sometimes higher test scores.

Pages