Overcoming barriers to mHealth co-design in low- and middle-income countries: a research toolkit

Mobile health (mHealth) interventions in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs) have considerable potential to advance social and human development through the equitable delivery of health information and enabling self-care for disadvantaged populations. Involving stakeholders through co-design positively impacts the development of mHealth solutions and, in turn, their social, economic, and human development outcomes. The complex systems and multifaceted contexts confronted in co-design present barriers. This work focuses on barriers encountered in mHealth co-design in LMICs, related principally to culture, language, and technology. It presents a toolkit highlighting methods to best overcome such barriers, aiming to strengthen ‘mobile phones for development’ research and practice. Additionally, it provides an illustrative example of applying the toolkit. By presenting this toolkit to overcome barriers and create opportunities for realising health outcomes from information and communications technology (ICT) implementation, this article contributes to the fields of ICT for development, participatory design, and population and digital health.