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The implementation of mobile health (mHealth) in developing countries seems to be stuck in a pattern of successive pilot studies that struggle for mainstream implementation. This study addresses the research question: what existing health-related structures, properties and practices are presented by rural areas of developing countries that might inhibit the implementation of mHealth initiatives?

This study was conducted using a socio-material approach, based on an exploratory case study in West Africa. Interviews and participant observation were used to gather data. A thematic analysis identified important social and material agencies, practices and imbrications which may limit the effectiveness of mHealth apps in the region.

Findings show that, while urban healthcare is highly structured, best practice-led, rural healthcare relies on peer-based knowledge sharing, and community support. This has implications for the enacted materiality of mobile technologies. While urban actors see mHealth as a tool for automation and the enforcement of responsible healthcare best practice, rural actors see mHealth as a tool for greater interconnectivity and independent, decentralised care.

This study has two significant limitations. First, the study focussed on a region where technology-enabled guideline-driven treatment is the main mHealth concern. Second, consistent with the exploratory nature of this study, the qualitative methodology and the single-case design, the study makes no claim to statistical generalisability.

To the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to adopt a socio-material view that considers existing structures and practices that may influence the widespread adoption and assimilation of a new mHealth app. This helps identify contextual challenges that are limiting the potential of mHealth to improve outcomes in rural areas of developing countries.

This paper explores the rural experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic and seeks to understand the variations in these experiences between rural residents working in health care and those outside of health care occupations. This paper considers the impacts on physical health and access to health care (including challenges related to caretaking) as well as on mental health.

We interviewed 16 individuals living in rural communities in New Mexico between August and November 2020. These interviews were conducted through a virtual meeting platform (Zoom) or by phone and recorded. Then these interviews were transcribed and analyzed for key themes, and all themes were coded by at least two team members for inter-rater reliability.

Rural residency is linked to a wide range of health and health care inequities. From health care provider shortages, lack of internet infrastructure, and disruptions in access to resources when the closest resources are outside of the state, rural residents in New Mexico faced a wide range of unique challenges during the pandemic. This study also details from where rural residents obtain their health information, and we consider how politicization of the pandemic has impacted rural communities. The experiences of rural residents demonstrate how some policies fail to take into consideration the unique contexts of rural communities. All participants strongly identified with their roles as members of rural communities.

These interviews were conducted prior to the peak of pandemic transmission in these communities, so a follow-up should be conducted which reflects on the later stages. Future pandemic scholarship should consider the experiences of rural communities and address the unique challenges, needs, and strengths in developing best practices.

This paper provides unique insight into the lived experience of rural residents during the pandemic, and highlights disparities and challenges faced by health care workers as well as rural community members more broadly.

Physicians who are primary care providers in rural communities form an essential stakeholder group in rural mobile health (mHealth) delivery. This study was exploratory in nature and was conducted in Udupi district of Karnataka, India. The purpose of this study is to examine the perceptions of rural medical officers (MOs) (rural physicians) regarding the benefits and challenges of mobile phone use by community health workers (CHWs).

In-depth interviews were conducted among 15 MOs belonging to different primary health centers of the district. Only MOs with a minimum five years of experience were recruited in the study using purposive and snowball sampling. This was followed by thematic analysis of the data collected.

The perceptions of MOs regarding the CHWs' use of mobile phones were largely positive. However, they reported the existence of some challenges that limits the potential of its full use. The findings were categorized under four themes namely, benefits of mobile phone use to CHWs, benefits of mobile phone-equipped CHWs, current mobile phone use by CHWs and barriers to CHWs' mobile phone use. The significant barriers reported in the CHWs' mobile phone use were poor mobile network coverage, technical illiteracy, lack of consistent technical training and call and data expense of the CHWs. The participants recommend an increased number of mobile towers, frequent training in mobile phone use and basic English language for the CHWs as possible solutions to the barriers.

Studies examining the perceptions of doctors who are a primary stakeholder group in mHealth as well as in the public health system scenario are limited. To the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first studies to examine the perception of rural doctors regarding CHWs' mobile phone use for work in India.

The purpose of this paper is to eliminate the medicine stock-out problem by building an optimum medicine stock in rural healthcare centers in India.

Data associated with inflow and outflow of a specific medicine (folic acid tablets) arer collected from all consecutive supply chain stages during the survey. While conducting the survey, it is found that several medicines are out of stock owing to uncertain lead time and demand. Integrating with quantity discount and min–max (s, S) inventory policy, two models are developed using system dynamics: one is Model 1 with constant lead time and uncertain demand, and the other is Model 2 with both uncertain lead time and demand.

Both models are simulated for a period of one year on Stella 9.1 platform. The results are compared with actual data, and the comparison shows significant improvement of the medicine stock at all downstream stages, while maintaining a certain safety stock. Further, Model 2 suggests a larger stock than Model 1 at each point of time.

Despite numerous issues, the stocks of medicine in rural healthcare systems can be improved as suggested by the models. The models depict the behavior of inventory stock at each stage of the supply chain and act as a function of time that could be used in the form of a prediction tool for the policymakers.

This paper is one of the first papers that had developed the model of the medicine supply chain in rural parts of a developing country. It provides a generic framework for the stock assessment and improvement throughout the supply chain.

The recommended public healthcare infrastructure and human resources are essential to deliver healthcare services, particularly in tribal areas, as the country’s tribal population depends mainly on the public healthcare system for their medical needs. India has a substantial share of the tribal population, accounting for approximately 9% of the total population. The paper reviews the state of public healthcare infrastructure and human resources in tribal areas for a period that spreads over a decade.

The paper relied on data from the Government of India’s Rural Health Statistics (RHS) reports (2011–2012 and 2021–2022). From these reports, data on the physical infrastructure and human resources in the tribal areas were extracted. The extracted data were compiled and analyzed using Microsoft Excel.

The analysis showed that the improvement in public healthcare infrastructure and human resource situation in tribal areas of the country was not commensurate with the tribal population growth seen in the last decade. As a result, the average population covered by a health facility was greater than the prescribed norms in the tribal-dominated geographies. The health worker-population ratio at the primary healthcare level was also higher than the national norms. However, there was a substantial improvement in the doctor-population ratio at the primary health center level. In comparison to tribal-lean states, tribal-dominated states faced the concurrent challenge of a growing population and strained healthcare facilities and human resources. As a result, the healthcare infrastructure and human resource gap continued in the tribal-dominated states of the country. The gaps in health infrastructure and human resources in tribal-dominated states must be addressed as a priority under the health infrastructure strengthening efforts to ensure that the tribal population receives and has access to quality health care from publicly funded health facilities, leading to improved health outcomes in the tribal population and the achievement of the sustainable development goals (SDGs).

We have not come across any paper that has carried out pancountry analysis of healthcare infrastructure and human resources in tribal areas.

This study examines the relative efficiencies of anti-poverty policies implemented in 28 Chinese provinces.

This study uses meta-frontier undesirable dynamic two-stage data envelopment analysis. The authors divide the poverty reduction process into two stages: agricultural production and poverty reduction. Public expenditure is the input for the second stage, and the population below the poverty line is the undesirable output. The authors compute the efficiencies (overall efficiency, efficiency of each stage and the efficiencies of individual inputs and outputs) using meta-frontier analysis for the 28 provinces.

The results show that: (1) a significant imbalance exists between the eastern and western regions in terms of input-output efficiencies; (2) the poverty reduction stage generally fared better than the agricultural production stage did. In particular, most provinces saw increases in poverty reduction efficiencies between 2013 and 2017; (3) the place-based poverty relief policies introduced in recent years are effective at reducing the poverty rate and reaching the government-set goals and (4) while disposable income has increased steadily over the past few years, income inequality has been exacerbated.

The results show that: (1) a significant imbalance exists between the eastern and western regions in terms of input-output efficiencies; (2) the poverty reduction stage generally fared better than the agricultural production stage did. In particular, most provinces saw increases in poverty reduction efficiencies between 2013 and 2017; (3) the place-based poverty relief policies introduced in recent years are effective at reducing the poverty rate and reaching the government-set goals and (4) while disposable income has increased steadily over the past few years, income inequality has exacerbated.

A large amount of attention and public resources are devoted to fighting poverty and associated market failures in China. The extant literature focuses either on the agricultural production itself or the relationship between human capital and productivity levels. Making use of recent developments of the DEA method, the authors propose a new framework for evaluating the efficiencies of the poverty reduction process. Such a framework has the advantage of giving researchers and policymakers a more detailed diagnosis with regard to the components in the endeavor to eliminate poverty and providing useful information for policymakers to optimize public funds use. Methodologically, the framework is flexible enough to be employed for future research in similar appraisals, at different geographic and scale aggregation levels, for public projects including but not limited to poverty reduction.

Changing healthcare provision need not be sudden or damaging. If changes are made then many valuable services may be lost. This article aims to consider dramatic change and its negative effects on Indian rural healthcare provision.

A case study is used to evaluate rural India's developing private health insurance, combined with evidence from other micro health insurance effectiveness studies.

Rural health insurance schemes are financially and culturally precarious. Enthusiastically importing these ventures into rural scenarios fragments vulnerable healthcare systems that have served and survived many other threats. The new services may fail if not subsidised and the experiment might undermine what was already in place. Is it improvement or just change?

Missing rural health providers from the dataset means that data are not regularly available.

As more Western healthcare concepts are parachuted into developing areas, understanding and appreciating what already exists is necessary. New healthcare schemes must be critically evaluated, including the damage they could do to other healthcare provision.

Unlike other published research on private health insurance introduced in India and Africa, this study critically reviews the effect in rural areas from vital hospital services' perspective.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to “forced innovation” in the health education industry. High-quality training of the future rural health workforce is crucial to ensure a pipeline of rural health practitioners to meet the needs of rural communities. This paper describes the implementation of an online multidisciplinary teaching program focusing on integrated care and the needs of rural communities.

A multidisciplinary teaching program was adapted to allow students from various disciplines and universities to learn together during the COVID-19 pandemic. Contemporary issues such as the National Aged Care Advocacy Program for Residential Aged Care COVID-19 Project were explored during the program.

This case study describes how the program was adopted, how learning needs were met, practical examples (e.g. the Hand Hygiene Advocacy within a Rural School Setting Project), the challenges faced and solutions developed to address these challenges. Guidelines are proposed for remote multidisciplinary learning among health professional students, including those in medical, nursing, pharmacy, dentistry, and allied health disciplines.

The originality of this program centers around students from multiple universities and disciplines and various year levels learning together in a rural area over an extended period of time. Collaboration among universities assists educators in rural areas to achieve critical mass to teach students. In addition it provides experiences and guidance for the work integrated learning sector, rural health workforce practitioners, rural clinical schools, universities, policy makers, and educators who wish to expand rural online multidisciplinary learning.