This paper attempts to describe constraints and challenges of using information and communications technology (ICT) in the health sector of developing countries. The paper focuses on the following areas of health impact:

The paper provides a broad introduction to ICTs as tools for helping to reach Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in the health sector and explores their potential and actual use. It then highlights major constraints and challenges and identifies emerging technologies that may shape future ICT use in health, particularly extending the reach of the health system to rural settings and increasing citizen involvement.

Results from this research show that successful strategies are those that foster equitable access to ICTs, support their meaningful use, and encourage community and user self-empowerment, rather than simply provide ICTs as tools.

Key lessons and strategies include:

Further strategies express the need for local content generation from people who both use and provide health care. ICTs can be used to tell their stories, communicate lessons from their experiences, create content from these experiences relevant to local contexts and issues for their community use and for further health action in support of each other.

The document provides a framework for stepped changes towards for staged development, taking local and national context in developing countries into account.

The paper offers seven broad conclusions: