Based on donor-funded global health projects, systems requirements were gathered and existing mobile systems were evaluated for use in surveillance in low-resource settings. In advance of the tools evaluation, literature reviews were performed, and informatics experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the World Health Organization (WHO) and various global nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and associations were consulted and then recommendations were formulated. Systems were evaluated based on minimum requirements, which included maturity, usage, scalability, interoperability, functional features related to data collection and attributes that enable country ownership and generate high data quality.