Other uses included in‐person and/or text message communication, and recording clients' health information. In many of the studies, the mobile devices had decision support software loaded onto them, which showed the steps the health workers had to follow when they provided health care. Most of the 43 included sample studies were from low‐ or middle‐income countries. We used GRADE‐CERQual to assess our confidence in the findings. For the 43 sampled studies, we extracted information, such as country, health worker category, and the mHealth technology. We found 53 studies that met the inclusion criteria and sampled 43 of these for our analysis. We assessed abstracts, titles and full‐text papers according to the inclusion criteria.
We included studies conducted in any country. We excluded participants identified as technical staff who developed and maintained the mHealth technology, without otherwise being involved in the programme delivery.
We included all categories of health workers, as well as those persons who supported the delivery and management of the mHealth programmes.
These services could be implemented in public or private primary healthcare facilities, community and workplace, or the homes of clients. We included studies of mHealth programmes that were part of primary healthcare services. We included studies that used qualitative data collection and analysis methods. We screened these records and any studies that we identified as potentially relevant are awaiting classification. We re‐ran the search strategies in February 2020. We screened the reference lists of included studies and key references and searched seven sources for grey literature (16 February to 5 March 2018). We searched Global Health in December 2015. We searched MEDLINE, Embase, CINAHL, Science Citation Index and Social Sciences Citation Index in January 2018. To synthesise qualitative research evidence on health workers' perceptions and experiences of using mHealth technologies to deliver primary healthcare services, and to develop hypotheses about why some technologies are more effective than others. An understanding of how health workers relate to, and experience mHealth, can help in its implementation. Within primary care, health workers often use mobile devices to register clients, track their health, and make decisions about care, as well as to communicate with clients and other health workers. Mobile health (mHealth), refers to healthcare practices supported by mobile devices, such as mobile phones and tablets.
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