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Accepted for/Published in: JMIR mHealth and uHealth

Date Submitted: May 9, 2019
Date Accepted: Jun 27, 2019

The final, peer-reviewed published version of this preprint can be found here:

The Elusive Path Toward Measuring Health Outcomes: Lessons Learned From a Pseudo-Randomized Controlled Trial of a Large-Scale Mobile Health Initiative

Mechael P, Kaonga NN, Chandrasekharan S, Prakash MP, Peter J, Ganju A, Murthy N

The Elusive Path Toward Measuring Health Outcomes: Lessons Learned From a Pseudo-Randomized Controlled Trial of a Large-Scale Mobile Health Initiative

JMIR Mhealth Uhealth 2019;7(8):e14668

DOI: 10.2196/14668

PMID: 31436165

PMCID: 6724498

Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.

The Elusive Path Toward Measuring Health Outcomes: Lessons Learned From a Pseudo-Randomized Controlled Trial of a Large-Scale Mobile Health Initiative

  • Patricia Mechael; 
  • Nadi Nina Kaonga; 
  • Subhashini Chandrasekharan; 
  • Muthu Perumal Prakash; 
  • Joanne Peter; 
  • Aakash Ganju; 
  • Nirmala Murthy

Mobile health (mHealth) offers new opportunities to improve access to health services and health information. It also presents new challenges in evaluating its impact, particularly in linking the use of a technology intervention that aims to improve health behaviors with the health outcomes that are impacted by changed behaviors. The availability of data from a multitude of sources (paper-based and electronic) provides the conditions to facilitate making stronger connections between self-reported data and clinical outcomes. This commentary shares lessons and important considerations based on the experience of applying new research frameworks and incorporating maternal and child health records data into a pseudo-randomized controlled trial to evaluate the impact of mMitra, a stage-based voice messaging program to improve maternal, newborn, and child health outcomes in urban slums in India.


 Citation

Please cite as:

Mechael P, Kaonga NN, Chandrasekharan S, Prakash MP, Peter J, Ganju A, Murthy N

The Elusive Path Toward Measuring Health Outcomes: Lessons Learned From a Pseudo-Randomized Controlled Trial of a Large-Scale Mobile Health Initiative

JMIR Mhealth Uhealth 2019;7(8):e14668

DOI: 10.2196/14668

PMID: 31436165

PMCID: 6724498

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