Technology is playing an increasingly important role on
the African continent, helping medical teams ensure children and
vulnerable people are given essential vaccinations.
Many developing countries still rely on paper-based health data
systems. But a partnership comprising
Vodafone Group
Foundation (VGF), the World Health Organization (WHO), the
national Ministries of Health and the United Nations Foundation
(UNF) is supporting an initiative to develop efficient and
effective health data systems, which are essential to improving
global public health.
The partnership's Health Data Systems program is working to
replace paper-based health systems with a powerful, portable
electronic system based on open source technology developed by
not-for-profit organisation DataDyne. The system provides the data
that powers the fight against deadly diseases, and serves as an
early-warning system for epidemics by flagging destructive trends
before they transform into global health emergencies.
Mitul Shah, senior director of technology partnerships at the
United Nations Foundation, said, The premise behind the work is to
be able to provide health works with mobile technology to replace
inefficient paper-based approaches."
Health workers need to run surveys and collect health data in
order to run immunisation programmes such as the programme to
provide immunisation against measles. "In rural areas, medical data
did not exist." Shah and his team realised they needed a tool that
would allow health workers to run surveys and questionnaires on
mobile devices in order to collect medical data.
Joel Selanikio, a physician, epidemiologist formerly of the US
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, realised that the
developing world needed an alternative. "My idea was to use
computers for data collection, as most of the health surveys were
being carried out using paper and clipboards." It could take health
works in Africa two to three months to collect the data and
anything between six months and a year to load data into a computer
system.
Systems for collecting health data do exist, but they tend to be
proprietary. "We tried using a questionnaire applications for
handheld computers, but it required a programmer," Selanikio said.
This would have made it costly to change and adapt the
questionnaires.
Along with medical career, Selanikio had previously worked as a
Wall Street computer consultant and decided that the only solution
was to start building the software himself. "The software needed to
be comparable to a word processor in terms of ease of use. I began
programming it myself, and hired a programmer for the first stage
of development."
The program, EpiSurveyor, is a free, open-source,
standards-based software package for the collection and analysis of
any type of information on mobile devices. In 2003, he co-founded
DataDyne with computer
consultant Rose Donna, who had previously worked for the American
Red Cross, to help promote and develop EpiSurveyor.
By providing the free software, the two founders hope that
participating countries will be able to collect and analyse data
themselves, which should dramatically reduce their need for
consultants. It could also increase their ability to identify and
manage public health issues including HIV/Aids, malaria and
measles.
"We are trying to create a tool for small non-government
organisations that is low cost," Selanikio says. Data is moved from
a Palm handheld device to a PC using a cheap data synchronisation
cable. But he is keen to take advantage of the explosive growth of
mobile phones in Africa. "In Kenya, almost 100% of health workers
own a mobile phone, so we are working on a Jave 2.0 Mobile Edition
application for mobile handsets that will allow us to transmit
survey data via wireless."
Since 2006, regional/provincial health officers in every country
of sub-Saharan Africa have been trained in the use of EpiSurveyor
mobile electronic data collection software. Health officers in
these countries have been given training on how to use EpiSurveyor
for the collection of information to support clinic supervision, as
well as any other data they need such as vaccination coverage and
outbreak response.
Selanikio said he has seen promising results in Kenya, where
EpiSurveyor is being adopted across health programmes. In
particular he says it has been successfully used in the malaria
department of Kenya's Ministry of Health. The Kenyan government has
also taken the decision to allocate new funds to purchase
additional PDAs. This will increase the use of EpiSurveyor in
particular at the district level.
Along with Kenya, countries already trained and using
EpiSurveyor include Zambia, Ghana, Uganda, Cameroon, Senegal and
Sierra Leone. In November 2007 the Ethiopia Ministry of Health and
the World Health Organization's African Regional Office gathered in
Addis Ababa for training and field testing of DataDyne's
EpiSurveyor open-source mobile data collection tool.
The use of EpiSurveyor in Africa is featured in a new report
from the Vodafone Foundation and the United Nations Foundation,
Wireless Technology for Social Change: Trends in Mobile Use by
NGOs, which is being released on May 6. The report covers how
advocacy groups active in the areas of global health, environmental
conservation, and humanitarian relief are using wireless technology
to effect social change.