mPowering Frontline Health Workers is a USAID-funded public-private partnership that is working to accelerate the use of mobile technology
to improve the performance of frontline health workers around the world. Its mission is to contribute to the elimination of preventable child and
maternal deaths by applying mobile technology to improve the skills and performance of this critical workforce around the world. mPowering’s
objectives are to:
Partner with governments and organizations to build understanding of the power of mobile technology to strengthen child and maternal
health services;
Support scale-up of effective mHealth programs to improve the skills and performance of frontline health workers; and
Generate evidence and information on the use of mobile technology by frontline health workers in order to mobilize resources and improve
the design of mHealth programs.
mPowering currently supports two primary initiatives: 1) the ORB content library that connects frontline health workers and trainers to a library
of quality assured, openly licensed, free and mobile-ready content such as videos, job aids and courses, available at http://www.healthorb.
org/ and 2) Open Deliver represents a sustainable distance education platform and process for coordinating the sharing, conversion, mobile
distribution and certification of basic, digital education and training resources on a national scale where traditional education, by itself, is
unaffordable, inadequate or difficult to implement. To learn more, visit the Open Deliver web page.
ORB has three unique features: It brings into one space multimedia materials from multiple content developers with a current focus on maternal
and child health. It allows training implementers to modify and re-use the training materials, saving cost and time. It provides a unifying
platform for a global collaborative network of organizations to share and review content, integrate content into programs, and share user
experiences.
The Open Deliver platform consists of 3 distinct and integrated open source technologies: a digital content library (ORB) for content storage
and sharing; a Learning Management system for creating courses; and an Android based application for distributing the courses onto a mobile
device such as a smartphone or tablet. Together these technologies provide a centralized platform for and end-to-end process for
storing, validating, adapting, distributing and evaluating digital educational content. These technologies have been applied effectively in
multiple countries (e.g. Ethiopia, Nigeria) and states within countries (e.g. Sindh in Pakistan and Ondo in Nigeria). The Open Deliver platform
is designed to evolve with changes in technology, to accommodate government ownership and institutionalization and to meet the criteria
associated with a global public good.
mPowering is comprised of 16 partners from both public and private sectors, and the USAID-funded Maternal and Child Survival
Program (MCSP) serves as the partnership secretariat and funder. In September 2018, MCSP will close out mPowering activities and the
funding for mPowering will come to a close. In preparation for this transition, the mPowering Steering Committee is currently evaluating
options to sustain the partnership moving forward, given the significant support for mPowering’s work. As the current secretariat for
mPowering, Jhpiego is submitting this concept note to fund an organizational home for mPowering.