Wireless Access for Health seeks countrywide expansion

MANILA, Philippines - The Philippine Department of Health (DOH), RTI International, the University of Philippines, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Smart Communications and Qualcomm Incorporated, through Qualcomm Wireless Reach, announced recently plans to expand the Wireless Access for Health (WAH) project to Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao. The expansion is led by new project collaborators, the Zuellig Family Foundation (ZFF) and the DOH Ilocos Regional Office.

The DOH of Ilocos has agreed to replicate WAH in four provinces, including Ilocos Norte, Ilocos Sur, La Union and Pangasinan, and will help local government units adopt the WAH e-health platform by providing training for management teams at the regional and provincial levels. ZFF joined the project as a new collaborator in September 2012 and is leading the expansion in Visayas and Mindanao. In this role, ZFF will provide support and funding for software development and training.

Delivering quality health care to remote areas in the Philippines is often a challenge, with an estimated population of more than 100 million and a geographically diverse topography, including a number of islands. With 3G mobile broadband, these obstacles can be overcome, enabling governments to expand and scale their health care initiatives quickly and bring the benefits of attainable and comprehensive health services to people.

The WAH project uses 3G technology to improve health care by reducing the time required for reporting and by improving access to accurate and relevant patient information. Since the project was implemented in 2009, it has been successfully adopted in 37 city and rural clinics within and outside of the Tarlac Province. These clinics serve more than 2,000 patients a day and, as of March 2013, more than 250,000 patient consultations and 220,000 patient records have been recorded through the WAH platform.

As part of the WAH program, collaborators have created a mobile midwife solution that allows health care providers to collect data and create reports from barangays (villages) using a Qualcomm Snapdragon-enabled tablet and an alert system that sends messages to the mobile phones of patients. Qualcomm Snapdragon is a product of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Qualcomm. Messages include information such as important health milestones in prenatal care and child immunization reminders.

“We have witnessed the tremendous benefits the WAH project has already brought the people of Tarlac, and we look forward to working with our allies here in Ilocos from both the public and private sectors to expand the project to Ilocos Norte, Ilocos Sur, La Union and Pangasinan,” said Dr. Benito Arca, Assistant Regional Director of the DOH of Ilocos.

The WAH project has been recognized in the Philippines for its positive impact on enhancing health care planning and delivery and demonstrates the benefits that 3G wireless connectivity can provide in the area of mobile health.

To find out more about the Wireless Access for Health project, please visit: http://www.qualcomm.com/about/citizenship/wireless-reach/projects/health-care.