Table 1.

Overview of included studies.

Name of intervention	Authors (Year)	Number of articles	Study design	Country	Health domain	Target group	Type of mCDSSa
m4Changeb	McNabb et al (2015) [25]	1	Quantitative pre-post study	Nigeria	Maternal health	Community health (extension) workers	Decision algorithms for antenatal care incorporating clients’ data. Includes audio clips for counseling.
DESIRE (Decision Support and Integrated Record-Keeping)	Vedanthan et al (2015) [26]	1	Qualitative usability and feasibility study	Kenya	Hypertension	Nurses and clinical officers	Electronic records system coupled with algorithm-based decision support with alerts and reminders.
CommCare	Svoronos et al (2010) [27]	1	Qualitative and descriptive	Tanzania	Maternal health	Community health workers	Decision support protocols with reminders and checklists. Incorporates clients’ data for pregnancy monitoring and supervisory oversight.
mPneumonia	Ginsburg et al (2015) [28]	1	Mixed methods usability and feasibility testing	Ghana	Childhood illnesses	Lesser trained health care professionals	Algorithms for managing childhood illnesses integrated with “intelligent” breath counter and pulse oximeter.
Bacis (Basic Antenatal Care Information System)	Horner et al (2013) [29]	1	Before and after cohort study	South Africa	Maternal health	Nurses	Electronic patient information system with protocols to support providers’ action. Includes reminders, alerts, and checklists.
TB Tech	Catalani et al (2014) [30]	1	Mixed methods human-centered design	Kenya	Tuberculosis and HIV	Clinicians	Electronic patient records used to generate individualized reminders and decision support for provider action, education, and behavior change.
txt2MEDLINE	Armstrong et al (2012) [31]	1	Pre-post utility evaluation	Botswana	Different domains	Clinicians of varying cadres	Two-way short messaging service (SMS) of clinical guidelines with MEDLINE query function.
ALMANACH (New Algorithm for Managing Childhood Illness Using Mobile Technology)	Shao et al (2015a, 2015b) [32,33]	2	Controlled noninferiority trial and qualitative study	Tanzania	Childhood illnesses	Clinicians	Diagnostic and treatment algorithm supported by point-of-care tests and simple clinical assessments.
eIMCI (electronic Integrated Management of Childhood Illness)	Mitchell et al (2012, 2013); DeRenzi et al (2008) [34-36]	3	Mixed methods before-after cluster trial	Tanzania	Childhood illnesses	Health care professionals	Electronic protocols for the Integrated Management of Childhood Illnesses (IMCI) for stepwise examination, diagnosis, and management.
Text Messaging of Malaria Guidelines	Jones et al (2012); Zurovac et al (2011, 2012) [37-39]	3	Cluster randomized controlled trial	Kenya	Malaria	Health workers	One-way text messaging on malaria management, supported by unique motivational quotes.
QUALMAT (Quality of Maternal and Prenatal Care)	Blank et al (2013); Dalaba et al (2014, 2015); Mensah et al (2015); Saronga et al (2015); Zakane et al (2014); Duysburgh et al (2016) [40-46]	7	Mixed methods quasi- experimental study	Tanzania; Ghana; Burkina Faso	Maternal and prenatal health	Health professionals (nonphysicians)	Electronic decision support algorithm with data integration. Includes training materials and an electronic partograph.

^amCDSS: mobile clinical decision support system.

^bAlthough the m4Change study also used the CommCare app, we decided to treat them as independent studies because the interventions were only similar on a technical level and not part of an integrated multicountry study.