Patient Perspectives on mHealth for Maternal and Pre-maternal Health Services in Resource-Constrained Settings

Abstract

Background and Purpose: With the rapid evolution of computing trends and the growing use of technology in the healthcare sector, maternal healthcare delivery and accessibility require a transformative shift. However, studies indicate that the integration of technology into maternal service delivery remains slow. This is largely due to the absence of comprehensive frameworks that support diverse access to maternal electronic services (e-services), as existing scholarly work has mainly focused on maternal information provision. While such information provision has been valuable in enabling pregnant and new mothers to access appropriate educational content from accredited healthcare workers, it is predominantly delivered through text-based SMS, reflecting limited use of multimedia and mobile capabilities. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the requirements for developing an improved and comprehensive framework for maternal e-service delivery from patients’ perspectives.

Methods: This study has been conducted following the user-centred design (UCD) approach, where both pregnant and new mothers were engaged in the requirement-gathering process by responding to a questionnaire tool to understand what should be considered while developing an improved framework to comprehensively support the delivery of maternal e-services in this era, where technology is seen as a source of solutions to various aspects. The requirements centred on four themes: 1) demographic information of the participants, 2) awareness of maternal e-services, 3) assessment of the utilization of maternal e-services relative to maternal health challenges, and 4) security and privacy of data in technologically supported applications.

Results: As a result, this paper reveals a set of requirements identified as potential for developing a mobile health framework to improve access to maternal healthcare through the digitized delivery of maternal services, based on patient (pregnant and new mothers) perspectives.

Conclusion: This paper contributes to scholarly knowledge by identifying key requirements for developing a framework to enhance maternal healthcare access through technological solutions, particularly in settings where technology itself is a limited resource. These requirements serve as a foundation for creating interventions that have the potential to transform maternal service delivery and improve healthcare outcomes.