Novartis Launches SMS for Life 2.0 in Nigeria

Healthcare worker + child Africa (Nigeria)Swiss multinational pharmaceutical company Novartis, with the support of the Kaduna State Ministry of Health and Vodacom, has launched an upgrade to its successful SMS for Life program in the hope of saving more lives.

SMS for Life 2.0 has been released in Kaduna State, Nigeria. It will use smartphones and tablets to enable local healthcare workers to track stock levels of antimalarials, vaccines, and HIV, tuberculosis and leprosy treatments, and send notifications to district medical officers when stocks are low. It will also monitor surveillance parameters of malaria, maternal and infant deaths and seven other diseases – including measles, yellow fever and cholera. Furthermore, the program will enable training of healthcare workers in local facilities through eLearning.

“Novartis is proud to partner with the Kaduna State Ministry of Health to implement the first ever SMS for Life 2.0 program,” said Joseph Jimenez, CEO of Novartis. “Companies must join forces with the public sector to co-create innovative solutions to improve access to healthcare around the world. This is the first step in what we hope will be an impactful public health initiative, unleashing the potential of mobile technology and big data to increase the quality of care for underserved patients.”

In addition to the program’s launch in Nigeria, a memorandum of understanding has been signed with the Zambian Ministry of Health to deploy SMS for Life 2.0 in up to 2,000 health facilities around Zambia. It is once again supported by Vodacom and expected to launch in Q2 2017.

The original SMS for Life program was launched in 2009 and used mobile phones to manage stock levels of malaria medicines in more than 10,000 healthcare facilities in sub-Saharan countries. The new program is a significant upgrade, allowing the tracking of far more parameters.