ArticleGlobal health research and policy2019
Effect of a community health worker mHealth monitoring system on uptake of maternal and newborn health services in Rwanda.
Article in Global health research and policy, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Contextual success and pitfalls of mHealth service for maternal and child health in Africa: An Intervention, Context, Actors, Mechanism, and Outcome (ICAMO) framework guided systematic review of qualitative evidence.BMC pregnancy and childbirth · 2024Pooled it
- Evaluating the Adoption of mHealth Technologies by Community Health Workers to Improve the Use of Maternal Health Services in Sub-Saharan Africa: Systematic Review.JMIR mHealth and uHealth · 2024Pooled it
- Use of Apps to Promote Childhood Vaccination: Systematic Review.JMIR mHealth and uHealth · 2020Pooled it
- Evaluation of community health worker's performance at home-based newborn assessment supported by mHealth in rural Bangladesh.BMC pediatrics · 2022Trial
- New Path to Recovery and Well-Being: Cross-Sectional Study on WeChat Use and Endorsement of WeChat-Based mHealth Among People Living With Schizophrenia in China.Journal of medical Internet research · 2020Trial
- Digital twin virtual hospitals and rural health disparities: a six-country comparative study (2018-2024).Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- Lessons of practices of community-based maternal and child health surveillance system during and post COVID-19 in Indonesia.Global health action · 2025Article
- Article
- Impact of Mobile Health (mHealth) Use by Community Health Workers on the Utilization of Maternity Care in Rural Malawi: A Time Series Analysis.International journal of women's health · 2025Article
- Analyzing the usage of theories of change for routine immunization programs -- a review of impact evaluations from LMICs.Journal of health, population, and nutrition · 2024Review
- Mapping the Role of Digital Health Interventions to Enhance Effective Coverage of Antenatal Care: A Scoping Review.Journal of multidisciplinary healthcare · 2024Article
- The role of mHealth intervention to improve maternal and child health: A provider-based qualitative study in Southern Ethiopia.PloS one · 2024Article
- Interventions addressing routine childhood immunization and its behavioral and social drivers.Frontiers in public health · 2024Review
- Predicting facility-based delivery in Zanzibar: The vulnerability of machine learning algorithms to adversarial attacks.Heliyon · 2023Article
- Effects of mobile APP for immunization on vaccination compliance of migrant children in southwest China: A community trial study.Human vaccines & immunotherapeutics · 2022Article
- Machine learning for maternal health: Predicting delivery location in a community health worker program in Zanzibar.Frontiers in digital health · 2022Article
- Combining the theory of change and realist evaluation approaches to elicit an initial program theory of the MomConnect program in South Africa.BMC medical research methodology · 2020Article
- Effects of scaling up various community-level interventions on child mortality in Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania: a modeling study.Global health research and policy · 2019Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundIn an effort to improve access to proven maternal and newborn health interventions, Rwanda implemented a mobile phone (mHealth) monitoring system called RapidSMS. RapidSMS was scaled up across Rwanda in 2013. The objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of RapidSMS on the utilization of maternal and newborn health services in Rwanda.
methodsUsing data from the 2014/15 Rwanda demographic and health survey, we identified a cohort of women aged 15-49 years who had a live birth that occurred between 2010 and 2014. Using interrupted time series design, we estimated the impact of RapidSMS on uptake of maternal and newborn health services including antenatal care (ANC), health facility delivery and vaccination coverage.
resultsOverall, the coverage rate at baseline for ANC (at least one visit), health facility delivery and vaccination was very high (> 90%). The baseline rate was 50.30% for first ANC visit during the first trimester and 40.57% for at least four ANC visits. We found no evidence that implementing RapidSMS was associated with an immediate increase in ANC (level change: -1.00% (95% CI: -2.30 to 0.29) for ANC visit at least once, -1.69% (95% CI: -9.94 to 6.55) for ANC (at least 4 visits), -3.80% (95% CI: -13.66 to 6.05) for first ANC visit during the first trimester), health facility delivery (level change: -1.79, 95% CI: -6.16 to 2.58), and vaccination coverage (level change: 0.58% (95%CI: -0.38 to 1.55) for BCG, -0.75% (95% CI: -6.18 to 4.67) for polio 0). Moreover, there was no significant trend change across the outcomes studied.
conclusionBased on survey data, the implementation of RapidSMS did not appear to increase uptake of the maternal and newborn health services we studied in Rwanda. In most instances, this was because the existing level of the indicators we studied was very high (ceiling effect), leaving little room for potential improvement. RapidSMS may work in contexts where improvement remains to be made, but not for indicators that are already very high. As such, further research is required to understand why RapidSMS had no impact on indicators where there was enough room for improvement.
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