TY - JOUR T1 - Digital health in South Africa: innovating to improve health JF - BMJ Global Health DO - 10.1136/bmjgh-2018-000722 VL - 3 IS - Suppl 2 SP - e000722 AU - Yogan Pillay AU - Pakishe Aaron Motsoaledi Y1 - 2018/04/01 UR - http://gh.bmj.com/content/3/Suppl_2/e000722.abstract N2 - In the postapartheid era, South Africa’s public health system has been transformed from a dysfunctional system which perpetuated discrimination based by race and inequality into a deracialised, more comprehensive and integrated health system.1 In 2015, rates of utilisation of health services across the continuum of care were the highest in sub-Saharan Africa: 94% of pregnant women received antenatal care (ANC), 76% received the recommended four ANC visits, 96% delivered in a health facility, 97% had births attended by a skilled provider and 84% attended postnatal care within 2 days following birth.2 High rates of service utilisation have been underpinned by programmes like MomConnect which aim to empower pregnant and postpartum women with knowledge and bolster the utilisation of health services.MomConnect was established by the National Department of Health in 2014 to register pregnancies and provide pregnant and postpartum women with twice-weekly health information text messages as well as access to a help desk for queries and feedback.3 4 Since its inception, MomConnect has grown to become one of the largest mHealth initiatives globally; by December 2017, it had cumulatively registered over 1.7 million pregnant women in over 95% (3300) of public health facilities nationally to receive short messaging service health information messages. It had also received more than 14 000 spontaneously reported compliments to the help desk—eight times as many as the 1450 complaints received (personal communication Ms Jane Sebidi, Helpdesk Coordinator). The help desk has also impacted positively on improving the quality of care in the health system.5 Both complaints and compliments are sent to local coordinators to feedback to the health professional or facility to which they relate. This feedback is important to ensure that complaints are attended to and the complainant provided with report on action taken and that good work is acknowledged and encouraged.In this … ER -