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Giving birth in Sub-Saharan Africa is a risky business. It kills more mothers and babies than anywhere else in the world, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). Some progress is being made. In Ghana, for example, the Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR) declined by 49% between 1990 and 2013 to 380 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2013 - but this still leaves some way to go to reach the United Nations Millennium Development Goal of 185. Call me On the veranda of the small, squat bungalow that is the Ahentia Community Based Planning and Service (CHPs) clinic sits a group of women. What makes this situation a little different is that each of them has been reminded about their appointment by messages sent to a mobile phone, through a system called Mobile Midwife. They also receive regular messages with individually-tailored information on everything from eating properly to when to give up manual labor to important treatment and vaccination advice. Mobile midwife is part of the Ghana mobile technology for community health (Motech Ghana) initiative - a collaboration between the non-profit organisation Grameen Foundation and the Ghana Health Service. In a country where there are more active mobile phone lines than people using the technology to reach women and connect healthcare facilities makes sense. When a woman signs up for the service, she is assigned a unique number. After each appointment, the nurse updates her medical records electronically using a mobile phone. By reviewing a digitally-generated monthly report, she can see who has had the correct vaccinations, for example. It also means that the health service can gather centralized data on maternal health in the region. The platform is now used in seven districts across Ghana. A desk-top nurse application has been developed to make it easier to enter large amounts of data, as well as an app for android smartphones. Challenges remain, however - in rural areas network coverage can be patchy, and communities are often off the national grid, with no way to charge a mobile. And mobile phone ownership is lowest among poor, rural women, according to Eddie Ademozoya, Grameen's head of implementation for the Motech Platform. For the Grameen Foundation, the time has come to hand over the running of the platform in Ghana to the Ghana Health Service. But that doesn't mean that their involvement is over. The suite is now being offered as an open source download, and is being used elsewhere in Africa, Asia and South America not only for maternal health but as an HIV medication reminder service and for general health management among other things. Make a claim Several worlds away from rural Ghana lies the capital, Accra. It's a bustling, booming, often gridlocked city with budding aspirations to rival Africa's technology hubs Nairobi and neighboring Lagos. Like much of west Africa, many of the clinics and other healthcare facilities servicing the city still rely on time-consuming paper and print to coordinate operations - meaning there's often (if not usually) a large backlog of paperwork and insurance documents waiting to be dealt with. The software creates an integrated electronic medical records system that aims to link every department in a healthcare facility to a central database, integrating the process so that everyone from the receptionist to the doctor to the lab to the pharmacy can track a patient's progress. This means that not only should there be no chance of mistakes being made because different departments don't speak to each other, but the paperless system should save time and increase efficiency. Insurance claim documents can be generated automatically and sent off. And if the insurer is also using ClaimSync software it can be received almost immediately. The platform is currently being used at the Danpong Clinic in Accra. Osei Antobre is the Medical Services Manager at the facility, and says that the software has improved confidentiality and increased efficiency. Healthcare facilities where paperwork gets in the way of patient care, and where a lack of properly integrated technology means mistakes are more likely to happen, are not unique to Ghana. They're not even unique to the developing world. And the appetite for technology to plug these gaps is massive. But having answers to these problems provided by Ghanaians for Ghanaians is important, according to Grameen's David Hutchful.