Pilotitis: the biggest disease in mobile health (mHealth) campaigns in low and middle income countries.

What is pilotitis? Within health service development, 'pilotitis' might be understood as dissatisfaction with isolated pilot projects which may have been successful, but were not rolled out into enduring changes in broader service provision or policy.

Pim Kuipers, John S Humphreys, John Wakerman, Robert Wells, Judith Jones and Philip Entwistle. Collaborative review of pilot projects to inform policy: A methodological remedy for pilotitis?http://www.anzhealthpolicy.com/content/5/1/17

In Uganda alone there were 23 mHealth campaigns in 2008 and 2009 that have not been rolled out after the pilot phase.

In India there were over 30 mHealth campaigns in 2009 that will always remain a pilot.

The cure: if there is no business model, it’s a public service and scale will only follow after research studies on:-Impact;-Cost effectiveness;-Demand.

And…Collaboration

mHealth campaigns are working in low and middle income countries and pilots are necessary… but in order to professionalize the mHealth field we should not start any new low-scale pilots from 2011 on…

Working on pilots: Hajo van Beijma @ Text to Change hvanbeijma@texttochange.com