BETTEReHEALTH aimed to inform e-health policymaking towards better health outcomes through a bottom-up evidence-based holistic approach in African LLMICs. We are working to address three aspects related to successful e-health: human, technical and public policy factors. BETTEReHEALTH will set up four Regional Hubs based in Tunisia, Ghana, Ethiopia and Malawi, already endorsed by each country’s Ministry of Health. Each hub will organize coordination and networking activities (including two regional workshops) involving national and regional actors. We will also organise two international workshops to promote the cooperation and networking between Europe and Africa. Additionally, BETTEReHEALTH creates open access registries  by collecting information from African countries regarding eHealth policies and existing eHealth solutions. The registries will be used to identify best-practices and produce useful knowledge regarding e-health implementation. The knowledge produced in registries, together with the input from the other activities will be synthesized into e-health policy roadmaps and strategic implementation plans for better e-health services.
The strengths of BETTEReHEALTH are the diversity of the involved partners, which will contribute to an interdisciplinary approach (including health, technical and policymaking actors), the evidence-based approach guaranteed by the academic and research partners, and the strong local involvement ensured by the four Regional Hubs.

Objectives

• To collect evidence and map existing resources to inform the successful deployment of e-health in LLMICs in Africa.
• To address the human factors that are related to successful e-health technologies in African LLMICs.
• To address the technical factors that are related to successful e-health technologies in African LLMICs.
• To address the public policy factors that are related to successful e-health technologies.
• To facilitate national initiative by authorities for the successful deployment of e-health in LLMICs in Africa.

Work Plan

1.  Research, existing resources and evidence
2.  Human factors
3.  Technical factors
4.  Public policy factors
5. Communication and dissemination
6. Ethics requirement

Methodology

The overall methodology of the project is based on three frameworks, namely “Knowledge management for policy,” the “Theory of Change” (ToC) and the “Quadruple Helix”. Knowledge management for policy” will be used to define the necessary actions needed for producing knowledge that can be used by policymakers. The ToC is an approach for working systematically towards a desired outcome. These two frameworks have inspired the structure and the content of the WPs of the project. The “Quadruple Helix” theory that describes the knowledge based economic development and innovation is used for justifying the diversity among our partners, and for exploiting in full the potential benefits of their interaction.