A Mobile Devices Health Information Application for Community Based Health

ServicesPresented by Aelaf Dafla

Nathan Amanquah , Kwadwo Gyamfi Osafo-MaafoAshesi University College

Ashesi Moved to Berekuso in 2011

Community Based Health ServicesHealth officer lives with the community providing basic health servicesCommunity-based Health Planning and Services (CHPS)

Problem

• Limited exchange of information, consultation and collaboration between community health officers and management team

• Support• Supervision

• Report to management are not accurate and timely• Limited use of data at community level by health officers• Health officers continuous training

Solution and Approach

• Solution• Develop a mobile based health information system

that will help the health officers manage and use data.

• Also help them access information.

• Incremental Software development Approach• Identify the most important feature: We asked health

officers what is the most difficult part of their job? • Implement the feature.• Test and start again with the next most important feature.

Observations

• We spent some time talking to Community Health Officers (CHOs)• Usually CHOs are young people, who are keen to develop

professionally. • CHOs have a lot of information about their catchment area which is

not captured through the regular reporting.• Most CHOs use the Internet (facebook, google) for personal

communication.• Most CHOs use the Internet as a source of health information.• The paper based reporting is a burden to CHOs • CHOs don’t use the data they collect to manage their tasks.

Mobile Application

• We used Samsung 7 inch tablet• It is the right size for easy data entry, view

and carry around. • Reasonable price (less than $ 350). • Uses Android platform.

• The mobile application has two main parts:

• Record module• Knowledge module

The Mobile Application: Record• Vaccinations schedule

• Health officer can list the children that will be vaccinated this week/month.

• Outpatient follow up • Health officer can list who to follow-up on.

• Family planning appointments • Health officer knows who has appointment

this month.

The Mobile Application: Record

• National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) renewal tracking.

• The application highlights insurance subscription that will expire in the next 3 month.

• Health officer knows who to remind about renewing NHIS subscription.

The Mobile Application: Knowledge

• Access training content

• Share content using peer to peer network

• Post and receive feedback, help others

What we learned

• It helped to use incremental development, but it makes it difficult to train the health officers.

• The amount of time it takes to report has reduced significantly. • They are learning to appreciate the data the have and use for

planning.• Health officers are starting to appreciate the data and they have

started using for planning.

Conclusion

• More work need to be done to address all the problems identified. • Mobile devices like smart phones and tablets are enabling the

engineering of tools to improve social services.