Health Empirics

Maternal and child mortality pose a significant challenge in LMICs. Digital Health Interventions (DHIs) offer scalable solutions to overcome barriers to quality, equity, and access to healthcare. Notwithstanding their rapid uptake in India, there remains a dearth of economic evaluation of DHIs. The objective of this study is to systematically map the nature, range, and extent of the existing economic evidence on DHIs for Maternal and Child Health (MCH) in India. The present study elected to utilise a scoping review as its research approach using PRISMA-ScR guidelines for transparent reporting. The study identified eight sources of evidence. The findings of the review are organised into three overarching themes. The first theme is the cost-effectiveness of mHealth solutions for MCH. The second theme is the impact on health service coverage and data quality. The final theme is the efficiency of disease screening strategies. The included studies reported incremental cost-effectiveness ratios that fell below the GDP-per-capita-based thresholds applied by their respective authors. This finding suggests that the evaluated interventions show favourable cost-effectiveness within the respective study contexts. Future studies must adopt standardised economic evaluation frameworks with clearly defined perspectives and time horizons, include societal and budget impact analyses, expand geographic coverage, and the assessment of equity implications, embed cost-effectiveness analysis in real-world and prospective trials, conduct head-to-head comparisons of DHIs and screening strategies, improve transparency in reporting cost drivers, uncertainty, and sensitivity analyses.