Lessening barriers to healthcare in rural Ghana: providers and users’ perspectives on the role of mHealth technology. A qualitative exploration

BACKGROUND: Key barriers to healthcare use in rural Ghana include those of economic, social, cultural and institutional. Amid this, though rarely recognised in Ghanaian healthcare settings, mHealth technology has emerged as a viable tool for lessening most healthcare barriers in rural areas due to the high mobile phone penetration and possession rate. This qualitative study provides an exploratory assessment of the role of mHealth in reducing healthcare barriers in rural areas from the perspective of healthcare users and providers. METHOD: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 30 conveniently selected healthcare users and 15 purposively selected healthcare providers within the Birim South District in the Eastern Region of Ghana between June 2017 and April 2018. Data were thematically analysed and normative standpoints of participants were presented as quotations. RESULTS: The main findings were that all the healthcare users had functioning mobile phones, however, their knowledge and awareness about mHealth was low. Meanwhile, rural health care users and providers were willing to use mHealth services involving phone call in the future as they perceived the technology to play an important role in lessening healthcare barriers. Nevertheless, factors such as illiteracy, language barrier, trust, quality of care, and mobile network connectivity were perceived as barriers associated with using mHealth in rural Ghana. CONCLUSION: The support for mHealth service is an opportunity for the development of synergistic relationship between health policy planners and mobile network companies in Ghana to design efficient communication and connectivity networks, accessible, localised, user-friendly and cost-effective mobile phone-based health programmes to assist in reducing healthcare barriers in rural Ghana.