Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to understand how to build and implement information and communication technology (i.e. ICT) to help vulnerable people when significant social, cultural and economic barriers exist between the stakeholders.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors followed an action research approach to design and implement a mobile health hypertension education application to help India's most vulnerable populations. The authors used interpretive analysis, guided by the sustainable livelihoods framework, to uncover key findings.

Findings

Successfully implementing information and communication technology for development (ICT4D) requires understanding that all stakeholders (i.e. donors, facilitators and the beneficiaries) have important assets to contribute. Facilitators play an important role in connecting donors to the beneficiaries and fostering cultural humility in donors so that the donors will understand the role beneficiaries play in success. Stakeholders may use the ICT4D in unintended ways that both improve the people's health and increase some beneficiaries' financial livelihood.

Research limitations/implications

This research expands the definition of information systems success when implementing ICT4D in resource-constrained environments. Success is more than creating an mHealth app that was easy for beneficiaries to use and where they learned based on a pre- and post-test statistical analysis. Success involved development in all the stakeholders impacted by the social innovation collaboration. For the beneficiary community, success included getting screened for noncommunicable diseases as a first step toward treatment. For the facilitator, success involved more resources for their community health program. Amongst the donors, success was a change in perspective and learning cultural humility.

Practical implications

Although universities encourage faculty to work in interdisciplinary research teams to address serious world problems, university researchers may have to exert considerable effort to secure contracts, approvals and payments. Unfortunately, universities may not reward this effort to build ICT4D and continue to evaluate faculty based on journal publications. When universities undertake social innovation collaborations, administrators should ensure responsive and flexible university processes as well as appropriate academic reward structures are in place. This need is heightened when collaborations involve international partners with limited resources and time needed to build relationships and understanding across cultures.

Social implications

This study discovered the importance of fostering cultural humility as a way of avoiding potential conflicts that may arise from cultural and power differences. Cultural humility moves the focus of donor-beneficiary relationships away from getting comfortable with “them” to taking actions that develop relationships and address vulnerabilities (Fisher-Borne et al., 2015). This research shows how the facilitator helped the donor develop cultural humility by involving the donor in various initiatives with the beneficiary community including allowing the donor to live in a dormitory at the hospital, work in an urban slum and visit health screening campus.

Originality/value

This study (1) extends the ICT4D literature by incorporating cultural humility into the sustainable livelihoods framework, (2) provides a contextual understanding of developing cultural humility in ICT4D projects with a complex group of stakeholders and (3) describes how facilitators become a catalyst for change and a bridge to the community. The culturally humble approach suggests revising the livelihood framework to eliminate words like “the poor” to describe beneficiaries.

中文翻译：

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实施移动医疗应用程序以对抗印度弱势人群的高血压

目的

本文的目的是了解当利益相关者之间存在重大社会、文化和经济障碍时，如何建立和实施信息和通信技术（即 ICT）来帮助弱势群体。

设计/方法/方法

作者采用行动研究方法设计和实施了一个移动健康高血压教育应用程序，以帮助印度最脆弱的人群。作者在可持续生计框架的指导下使用解释性分析来揭示关键发现。

发现

成功实施信息和通信技术促进发展（ICT4D）需要了解所有利益相关者（即捐助者、促进者和受益者）都有重要的贡献资产。促进者在将捐助者与受益人联系起来以及培养捐助者的文化谦逊方面发挥着重要作用，以便捐助者了解受益人在成功中所扮演的角色。利益相关者可能会以意想不到的方式使用 ICT4D，从而改善人们的健康并增加一些受益人的财务生计。

研究限制/影响

本研究扩展了在资源受限环境中实施 ICT4D 时信息系统成功的定义。成功不仅仅是创建一个移动医疗应用程序，该应用程序易于受益人使用，并且他们可以根据测试前和测试后的统计分析进行学习。成功涉及受社会创新合作影响的所有利益相关者的发展。对于受益社区而言，成功包括进行非传染性疾病筛查，这是治疗的第一步。对于协调人来说，成功需要为其社区健康计划提供更多资源。在捐助者中，成功是观点的改变和学习文化谦逊。

实际影响

尽管大学鼓励教师在跨学科研究团队中工作以解决严重的世界问题，但大学研究人员可能不得不付出相当大的努力来获得合同、批准和付款。不幸的是，大学可能不会奖励这种建立 ICT4D 并继续根据期刊出版物评估教师的努力。当大学开展社会创新合作时，管理人员应确保响应迅速且灵活的大学流程以及适当的学术奖励结构到位。当合作涉及资源和时间有限的国际合作伙伴来建立跨文化关系和理解时，这种需求就会更加强烈。

社会影响

这项研究发现了培养文化谦逊作为避免可能因文化和权力差异而引起的潜在冲突的一种方式的重要性。文化谦逊将捐助者-受益人关系的重点从适应“他们”转移到采取行动来发展关系和解决脆弱性（Fisher-Borne等人，2015 年）。这项研究展示了协调人如何通过让捐赠者参与与受益社区的各种举措，包括允许捐赠者住在医院的宿舍、在城市贫民窟工作和参观健康检查校园，帮助捐赠者培养谦逊的文化。

原创性/价值

本研究 (1) 通过将文化谦逊纳入可持续生计框架扩展了 ICT4D 文献，(2) 提供了在 ICT4D 项目中与复杂的利益相关者群体一起发展文化谦逊的背景理解，以及 (3) 描述了促进者如何成为促进改变和连接社区的桥梁。文化上谦虚的方法建议修改生计框架，以消除诸如“穷人”之类的词来描述受益人。