Skip to Main Content

RTI uses cookies to offer you the best experience online. By and clicking “accept” on this website, you opt in and you agree to the use of cookies. If you would like to know more about how RTI uses cookies and how to manage them please view our Privacy Policy here. You can “opt out” or change your mind by visiting: http://optout.aboutads.info/. Click “accept” to agree.

Accept
RTI International
  • About
    • Office Locations
    • Executive Leadership
    • Corporate Governance
    • Partner with Us
      • U.S. Government
      • Clients and Funding Agencies
      • Industry and Commercial Clients
      • Foundations and Associations
      • Bilateral Agencies and Multilateral Banks
      • Universities and Academic Research Institutions
      • Suppliers and Small Businesses
    • Commitment to Quality
      • RTI's Client Listening Program
    • Ethics and Human Research Protection
    • Living Our Mission
    • Veteran Opportunities at RTI
    RTI staff support the annual Food Bank of Central and Eastern and North Carolina Sort-A-Rama

    About

  • Practice Areas
    • Health
      • Public Health and Well-Being
      • Health Care Transformation
      • Behavioral Health
      • Health Behavior Change
      • Precision Medicine
      • RTI Health Solutions (RTI-HS)
      • RTI Center for Community Health Evaluation and Economics Research
    • Transformative Research Unit for Equity​
      • Equity Capacity Building Hub
      • Social and Economic Justice Research Collaborative
      • Narrative Research and Community Engagement Lab
    • Education and Workforce Development
      • Early Childhood
      • K-12 Education
      • Postsecondary Education
      • Career and Adult Education and Workforce Development
      • Education Policy, Systems, and Governance
      • Education Research Methodologies
      • Education Technologies
    • International Development
      • Energy for Development
      • Environment
      • Global Food Security, Agriculture, and Nutrition
      • Global Health
      • Governance
      • International Education
      • Monitoring, Evaluation, Research, Learning, and Adapting (MERLA)
      • Youth and Economic Opportunity
      • Building Resilience Against COVID-19 in Developing Countries
      • Water
    • Climate Change
      • Clean Energy Technology and Renewables
      • Climate Finance
      • Climate Justice and Equity
      • Climate Planning, Preparedness and Resilience
      • Climate Policy
      • Climate Vulnerability, Adaptation, and Mitigation
      • Economic Impacts of Climate Change
    • Water
      • Food-Energy-Water Nexus
      • Water Quality
      • Water Sector Governance
      • Urban Sanitation
      • Water Service Provider Strengthening
      • Water Resources Management
    • Energy Research
      • Carbon Capture and Utilization
      • Biomass Conversion
      • Natural Gas
      • Energy Efficiency
      • Industrial Water
      • Syngas Processing
    • Environmental Sciences
      • Air Quality
      • RTI Center for Water Resources
      • Urban Sustainability
      • Toxics
      • Building Resiliency in the FEW Nexus
      • Climate Change Sciences and Analysis
      • Environmental Policy
      • Environmental Justice
      • Sustainable Materials & Waste Management Solutions
    • Justice Research and Policy
      • RTI Center for Community Safety and Crime Prevention
      • RTI Center for Policing Research and Investigative Science
      • Child Well-Being and Family Strengthening
      • RTI Center for Forensic Sciences
    • Food Security and Agriculture
      • Market Systems Strengthening
      • Food Safety
      • Food and Nutrition
      • Global Food Security, Agriculture, and Nutrition
      • Climate-Smart Agriculture
      • Agricultural Innovation
      • Obesity Prevention
    • Innovation Ecosystems
      • Innovation Advising
      • Innovation for Economic Growth
      • Innovation for Emerging and Developing Economies
      • Innovation for Organizations
      • Research, Technology, and Innovation Policy
      • Technology Acceleration
    • Military Support
      • Military Behavioral Health
      • Military Health and Human Performance
      • Military Sexual Assault, Harassment, and Domestic Violence Prevention
    RTI International Practice Areas

    Practice Areas

  • Services + Capabilities
    • Surveys and Data Collection
      • Survey Design
      • Instrument Development
      • Survey Methodologies
      • Data Collection
      • Establishment Surveys
      • Health Registries
      • Data Analysis and Reporting
      • Research Operations Center
    • Statistics and Data Science
      • Survey Statistics
      • Environmental Statistics
      • Coordinating Centers for Multisite Studies
      • Analysis and Design of Complex Data
      • Biostatistics
      • RTI Center for Data Science
    • Evaluation, Assessment and Analysis
      • Evaluation Design and Execution
      • Advanced Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods
      • Evaluation, Monitoring, and Assessment
      • Economic Analysis
      • Evaluating Communication Interventions and Campaigns
      • Evidence Synthesis for Policy and Practice
      • Risk Assessment and Prediction
    • Program Design and Implementation
      • Systems Strengthening and Scaling
      • Capacity Assessment and Building
      • Policy Reform Support
      • Curriculum and Teacher Professional Development
      • Interventions and Prevention Programs
      • Implementation Science
    • Digital Solutions for Social Impact
      • Human-Centered Design of Digital Solutions
      • Digital Product Development
      • Digital Communication Campaigns
      • Digital Data Analytics
    • Research Technologies
      • Survey Technologies
      • Data Management and Decision Support Systems
      • Geospatial Science, Technology, and Visualization
      • ICT for Limited-Resource Settings
      • Mobile Applications
      • Web Applications
      • Bioinformatics
    • Drug Discovery and Development
      • Medicinal Chemistry
      • Molecular Design and Cheminformatics
      • Behavioral Pharmacology
      • Drug Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics (DMPK)
      • In Vitro Pharmacology, Bioassay Development, and High-Throughput Screening (HTS)
      • Isotope Labeling
      • Regulatory Consulting and Support for Medical Products
    • Analytical Laboratory Sciences
      • Bioanalytical and Toxicology Research
      • Forensic Sciences
      • Physicochemical Characterizations
      • Metabolomics
      • Proficiency Testing and Reference Materials
      • Quality Assurance and Regulatory Compliance
      • Microbiology
      • Analytical Chemistry and Pharmaceutics
    • Engineering & Technology R&D
      • Biomedical Technologies
      • Decarbonization Sciences
      • Environmental Exposure & Protection
      • Materials & Environment
      • Sustainable Energy Solutions
    Telephone survey data collection at our Research Operations Center

    Services + Capabilities

  • Centers
    • RTI Center for Advanced Methods Development
    • RTI Center for Communication Science
      • Communication Research
      • Communication Design
      • Communication Delivery
    • RTI Center for Data Science
    • RTI Center for Education Services
      • Teaching and Learning
      • Education Leadership
      • Peer Learning Networks
      • Strategic Consulting
    • RTI Center for Forensic Sciences
    • RTI Center for Global Noncommunicable Diseases
      • Program Financing & Economics for NCDs
      • Health Systems Strengthening for NCDs
      • Communication Science and Behavior Change for NCDs
      • Implementation Science for NCDs
    • RTI Center for Newborn Screening, Ethics, and Disability Studies
      • Disability Studies
      • Ethics
      • Newborn Screening
    • RTI Center for Water Resources
      • Water Resources Sectors
      • Water Resources Services
      • Water Resources Tools
    • RTI Global Gender Center
    • North Carolina Center for Optimizing Military Performance
    • NCCU-RTI Center for Applied Research in Environmental Sciences
    • RTI Center for Climate Solutions
    Web of wires connecting points on a board

    Centers

  • Impact
    • Newsroom
    • Insights Blog
    • Events
    • Publications
    • RTI Press
      • About the RTI Press
      • Instructions for Authors
      • RTI Press Collections
    • Projects
    • Global Reach
      • Asia
      • Eastern Europe and Central Asia
      • RTI International India
      • Africa
      • Middle East and North Africa (MENA)
      • Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC)
    Fighting NTDs in South Sumatra

    Impact

  • Experts
    • Our Experts
    • In-Depth With Our Experts
    • Related News
    • Experts In the Media
    • RTI Fellow Program
    Experts discussing a project during RTI's Innovation Showcase

    Experts

  • Emerging Issues
    • COVID-19 Research
    • Artificial Intelligence
    • Global Health Security
    • Cannabis Research
    • Opioid Research
      • Interventions for Opioid Use Disorders
      • Preventing Opioid Misuse and Overdose
      • Treating Opioid Use Disorders
    • Policing Research and Investigative Science
    • Drone Research and Application
    • E-cigarette Research
    • Zika Virus Research
    • Integrated Governance
    trend graphs on a cellphone screen

    Emerging Issues

  • COVID-19 Research + Response
  • Global Reach
  • Insights Blog
  • Newsroom
  • RTI Press
  • Publications
  • Partner With Us
  • Careers
  • Facebook IconTwitter IconInstagram IconYouTube IconLinkedin Icon
Impact

Philippines Wireless Access For Health

  • Home
  • Impact
  • Philippines Wireless Access For Health

Leveraging the value of electronic health records and mobile health technologies to improve health care for rural populations

One of the greatest problems afflicting millions of poor families in the Philippines is inequity in health status and access to health care services. Although improvements in technology have brought the health care industry tools like electronic health records and SMS patient communications—technologies that deliver a tremendous improvement in care delivery and outcomes— developing countries have been slower to adopt these tools because of challenges that impact their sustainability and support.

Across the Philippines, more than 10 million families depend on Rural/City Health Units (RHUs) and village health stations for primary care. But many citizens do not seek care from these units because they perceive them as inefficient and as providing a lower level of care than private facilities.

Patients experience long wait times, health workers have difficulty tracking patients’ health histories, and health workers spend hours on manual data recording and reporting, a laborious task that often results in inaccurate information. These health facilities are responsible for primary care services, yet they often lack accurate, up-to-date information about services and community health.

Making Health Access Mobile and Electronic Health Records Sustainable

In 2009, RTI joined Qualcomm Wireless Reach and a team of local partners, to launch a pilot initiative in the rural province of Tarlac to address these longstanding problems and leverage the promise of health information technologies to improve access and care for poor Filipino communities across the province.

Known as Wireless Access for Health (WAH), this program delivered critical technical assistance to help RHUs in Tarlac improve their operations and quality of care. An innovative public-private partnership, the WAH initiative provided RHUs with low-cost, locally built and sustained electronic health records and mobile health (mHealth) tools, training, and support.

Developed by RTI, WAH’s platform features an electronic health records (EHR) system that is compatible with all major health programs, a mobile application known as EHR-Lite to track patient care outside of the main health clinic, and SMS patient alerts to improve follow-up and use of preventative services such as prenatal care and immunizations. The platform supports reporting of health claims to PhilHealth, the national health insurance program, and to the Department of Health’s Field Health Service Information System—reducing the burden on health workers and improving the timeliness and accuracy of health information.  

As part of WAH platform deployment we prepare partner clinics to shift from manual recording of patient and health data to digital and electronic records. As of August 2016, our WAH team has conducted 251 trainings for 141 clinics in 100 municipalities and five cities in 26 provinces. 

The WAH team was able to train over 175 doctors, 85 dentists, 107 medical technologists, 692 nurses, 951 midwives, and 737 other personnel—including laboratory aides, dental aides, volunteer neighborhood health workers, administrative aides and encoders. To date, our team has trained more than 2,740 clinicians.

Sustaining Progress through Partnership and Strong Local Ownership

Since its kick-off in 2009, WAH developed broad partnerships with private corporations, universities, local and national government agencies.  These partnerships, as well as grassroots advocacy, have been instrumental in the transition of WAH to local sustainability and independence from international support.

In 2013, we joined our partner organizations to form a nongovernmental organization (NGO)— the Wireless Access for Health Initiative—as a means of making its service sustainable and scalable. As a nonprofit NGO, WAH appeals to local governments, which are responsible for managing health services, because the platform is open source, which makes adoption of EHRs more affordable. In particular, local governments need EHR solutions that can be used offline with a local server, as most rural health units do not have a dedicated Internet connection.

Continuous Improvement and Scale-Up

Since launch of the NGO, WAH has been continuously improving its platform and products based on suggestions from health workers and key stakeholders. It has provided ongoing supports for RHUs, as well as training and tools to help mayors and health workers use the information produced by the electronic health record.

Today, all 39 rural health units in Tarlac Province benefit from the service. More than 140 clinics and more than 100 cities and municipalities covering Metro Manila, Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao have implemented the WAH platform, enabling medical services to be provided more promptly and giving medical providers accurate health information about their patients.

Although a number of rural areas continue to lack this resource, local funding to deploy and support WAH scale-up continues to increase, demonstrating that WAH has a tremendous value to local government.

Since the WAH project, we have leveraged this experience in implementing other health information systems projects around the world.  We continue to support WAH scale up and sustainability through the LuzonHealth project and other initiatives.

Share

Partners

  • Qualcomm Wireless Reach
  • Tarlac Provincial Health Office
  • the Philippines Department of Health
  • USAID
  • Tarlac State University
  • Zuellig Family Foundation
  • Pangasinan province
  • Surigao Del Sur province
  • Ilocos Sur province and Tarlac province; Former partners: Smart Communications and the University of the Philippines

Our Experts

Eileen Reynolds
Eileen Reynolds Senior project manager, Research Computing Division

Practice Areas

Global Health Innovation for Emerging and Developing Economies

Services

ICT for Limited-Resource Settings Systems Strengthening and Scaling Capacity Assessment and Building

Countries

Philippines

Learn More

Visit WAH Online

RTI Logo
  • Partner With Us
    • US Government
    • Commercial
    • Foundations & Associations
    • Multilateral Donors
    • Universities
    • Suppliers
  • Site
    • Privacy Policy
    • Security Policy
    • Site Map
    • Terms of Use
    • Accessibility
    • Contact Us
Contact Us
Facebook Icon Twitter Icon Instagram Icon YouTube Icon Linkedin Icon
delivering the promise of science
for global good
RTI Health Solutions RTI Innovation Advisors RTI Health Advance

© 2022 RTI International. RTI International is a trade name of Research Triangle Institute. RTI and the RTI logo are U.S. registered trademarks of Research Triangle Institute.