With an increased focus on placing vital health provider information into the hands of every South African, Always Active Technologies (AAT) have launched a Mxit App for national service provider network info4africa to complement their existing mobile portals.
With Vodacom reports listing basic (not smart) phones as the most popular handsets on their network, it makes sense that info4africa and AAT have adopted an omnichannel approach to putting important health, welfare and development service provider information into the hands of every South African citizen.
AAT has committed to making the large database of “mHealth” services mobile friendly and easily searchable for all. They have successfully launched and maintain the info4africa:
- Website at http://search.info4africa.org.za
- USSD service: Dial *120*448#
- Mobi site: http://info4africa.storefind.mobi/
- Android App: Search for “info4africa” on the Google Play Store
Mobile channels are created, expand, evolve and sometimes fail, but their central purpose – to facilitate engagement and communication – remains the same. AAT draws on this as a purposeful planning principle, enabling the development team to maintain a single core of regulatory business logic (read: CPA and PoPI compliant!) through a central hosted database while exposing the vital information across multiple device agnostic channels.
Embracing Mxit
The recently launched info4africa Mxit App puts the ever-growing info4africa database into the hands of Mxit’s millions of users. Because the Mxit platform works efficiently and easily on more than 8000 mobile handsets, it remains a popular communication tool for many South Africans.
Mxit has also become an important playground for commercial businesses, as illustrated by almost all of South Africa’s top ten advertisers claiming their space on the mobile portal. Interestingly too, Mxit reports that 70% of their users are already actively engaging with brands and advertisers on their platform.
The Power of Information in Your Hand
Business Development Manager at Always Active Technologies, Alan Haarhoff, mentions: “We really admire how info4africa have fully embraced the use of mobile technology to reach South Africans that need it most. By making their health clinic information so accessible, they truly are putting the power of information into peoples hands”.
Debbie Heustice, Director at info4africa chimed in by stating that: “the Mxit App forms an important part of our organisational strategy to further enable easy access to the info4africa referral database. By making our database searchable via Mxit, we’re proud to be making it even easier for anyone to find where they need to go, when they need help with a health-related matter. We’re putting our data where it needs to be – conveniently available to people, wherever they are. Our thanks go to the team at AAT for helping us make this mobile project possible”.
How to access the info4africa database on Mxit
- Install Mxit on your mobile handset by downloading it from http://get.mxit.com/
- Sign up and secure your username.
- Under “apps”, search for ‘info4africa
A proudly South African company, Always Active Technologies solves problems by powering enterprise mobile messaging, marketing and location services across the entire mobile ecosystem.
As an information resource often relied upon by many in the South African health sector, info4africa’s reputation precedes itself. A self-funded Centre of the School of Applied Human Sciences, College of Humanities, University of KwaZulu-Natal, info4africa has devoted more than thirteen years to collecting important health, wellbeing and development service provider information from across South Africa and making it as accessible as possible for every South African citizen.
