Rohingya mHealth: Increasing Access to Healthcare for the Rohingya Community in the Refugee Camps in Bangladesh

The purpose of the proposed project is to support the Rohingya community in
the refugeecamps in Bangladesh bordering Myanmar. That is, the partners in the project will extend, enhance and evaluate ongoing humanitarian efforts directed at increasing access to healthcare for the Rohingya. The partners are the IT University of Copenhagen (ITU) and Friendship (an NGO registered in Bangladesh). At present, Friendship provides healthcare services to the Rohingya througha network of clinics
staffed by paramedics. Key to these paramedics work is a mHealth application made by Friendship which helps them register patients, perform diagnosis, suggest treatment, and handle referrals. The ITU will lend its expertise to support and expand these mHealth initiatives in close collaboration with Friendship. This will be done through a series of activities: (1) Initial assessment of ongoing mHealth initiatives, (2) creation of action plan, (3) extension of prenatal and postnatal healthcare into other areas of the camps, (4) design of two new mHealth modules on nutrition and phycological well-being, (5) integration of the new modules into the existing mHealth system, and (6) final assessment of project. The project partners will use a participatory and inclusive methods i.e. participatory appraisal to generate data on the current mHealth services, participatory design to involve all stakeholders in the creation of the new mHealth modules, and qualitative and quantitative assessment to establish the impact of the new mHealth services. The output of the project will be an evaluation report on the present Friendship mHealth initiatives in the camps, an increase in prenatal and postnatal mHealth service deliveries by 2000 in total, the delivery of 6000 nutritional consultations with the new nutrition mHealth module, and the delivery of 500 consultation on physiological well-being supported by the other new mHealth module, finally a concluding project report will be provided.