Foundational knowledge - The process of mHealth software development

The mHealth application needs to be cost-effective to deploy and run. To the extent possible, help ensure sufficient human and technical resources for scale-up are in place. This may include advocating for supportive policies or more mobile network coverage. Essential scale-up resources include:

• Adequate mobile network coverage. You may need to adapt the solution for the existing mobile network infrastructure.
• Ongoing technical support to maintain the system and respond to problems as they arise. If the local technology partner does not have sufficient skills for implementing and maintaining the mHealth solution, it will eventually stop working. Consider mentoring them if needed to improve their skills.
• Reliable electricity for databases and monitoring dashboards in the system. How will phones or tablets be recharged?
• Secure database storage capacity, regular data back-up, and network monitoring.
• A privacy and confidentiality policy. Such a policy is needed when collecting and storing patient data (Yanxia et al., 2020).