Health / Santé

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Health

There is no doubt that ICTs are a tremendous enabler of healthcare, from health systems management to diagnostic tools, to medical education, and even simply as an enabler of communication. ICTs have had a transformative effect on the health sector globally. However, in Africa that impact has been constrained because access to ICTs at the front lines of health in rural areas has been non-existent in most African countries. Yet, the rapid expansion of mobile telephony into urban and rural areas in Africa has brought about new opportunities for access and innovation in the use of ICTs to facilitate the delivery of healthcare.

ACACIA has already funded projects regarding this issue, but it is only scratching the surface of the potential of health applications and services in Africa. The team will continue to work with practitioners and developers in the health field to innovate relevant software, content, and communication with these small devices. As mobile networks continue to expand into Africa, these tools will steadily increase in impact.

Santé

Il ne fait aucun doute que les TIC sont de formidables facilitateurs dans le domaine de la santé, qu’il s’agisse de la gestion des systèmes de santé, des outils diagnostiques ou de la formation médicale, voire simplement de la possibilité qu’elles offrent de faciliter la communication. Les TIC ont profondément transformé le secteur de la santé en général. En Afrique, toutefois, ces changements ont été freinés par l’accès inexistant aux TIC en première ligne des soins de santé dans les régions rurales de la plupart des pays du continent. Cependant, comme cela a été mentionné plus haut, la progression rapide de la téléphonie mobile dans les régions urbaines et rurales a entraîné de nouveaux débouchés, en matière d’accès et d’innovation, pour ce qui est d’utiliser les TIC afin de faciliter la prestation des soins de santé.

Le programme ACACIA — en collaboration avec Connectivité Afrique, qui réserve une partie de ses fonds à l’innovation dans l’utilisation des TIC — a financé des projets dans tous ces secteurs, mais n’en est encore qu’à effleurer le potentiel que représentent les applications et les services à offrir en santé en Afrique. L’équipe continue de collaborer avec des praticiens et des concepteurs du secteur de la santé afin de créer des logiciels, des contenus et des modes de communication pouvant être utilisés avec ces petits appareils. Ces outils prendront une importance croissante à mesure que les réseaux mobiles continueront de s’étendre en Afrique.



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Recent Submissions

Now showing 1 - 11 of 11
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    Privacy and security of medical information in developing countries and emergency situations : broadening the threat model; research note
    (LSE, London, GB, 2010) Hosein, Gus; Martin, Aaron
    The research aims to bridge the communications gap regarding eHealth initiatives and information security issues for designers, researchers, users, and policy-makers so that they become aware of related risks and challenges in developing countries and emergency situations. Experiences derived from working on information security within international organisations indicate that even basic privacy and security safeguards are very difficult to adapt in resource constrained environments, be they refugee camps, emergency situations, or developing countries.
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    OpenROSA Meeting 2009 : report on the 4th OpenROSA, July 20-23, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; final technical report
    (Mennonite Economic Development Associates, Waterloo, ON, CA, 2010) Lesh, Neal
    The meeting emphasized networking opportunities and training for people new to the OpenROSA consortium and its projects. OpenROSA (www.openrosa.org) is a group of organizations working together to foster open source, standards-based tools for mobile data collection, aggregation, analysis, and reporting, with a strong emphasis on health applications in low- and middle-income countries. One of its primary outputs has been the JavaROSA codebase (available at code.javarosa.org) for data collection on a wide range of Java-enabled phones. OpenROSA and JavaROSA were launched with funding from the Canadian International Development Research Centre (IDRC).
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    CommCare : a mobile phone application to strengthen and monitor community health programs
    (D-Tree International, Dar es Salaam, TZ, 2009) Lesh, Neal; Jackson, Jonathan; Dhadialla, Prabhjot; DeRenzi, Brian; Mhila, Gayo
    The paper provides information on the development of a mobile phone application, which aims to address weaknesses of community health programs and to provide real-time access to the data that community health workers (CHWs) collect. In addition to supporting partner implementations, the objective is to scale up in Tanzania and equip thousands of CHWs with CommCare. The working paper outlines the methodology of research, funding, partners, projected outcomes, and benefits of the application.
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    Handheld computers for survey and trial data collection in resource-poor settings : development and evaluation of PDACT, a Palm TM pilot interviewing system
    (Elsevier Ireland, Shannon, County Clare, IE, 2009) Seebregts, Christopher J.; Zwarenstein, Merrick; Mathews, Catherine; Fairall, Lara; Flisher, Alan J.; Seebregts, Clive; Mukoma, Wanjiru; Klepp, Knut-Inge
    Handheld data collection is an appropriate, affordable and convenient technology for health data collection in diverse settings. Software can be developed that permits end-users with no particular computer programming skill or knowledge to develop PDA-based survey applications and structured medical record form applications. The article reviews a Personal Data Collection Toolkit (PDACT) software, developed to enable questionnaires to be compiled, completed, and evaluated, in several representative field survey settings. Compared with paper-based collection, data validation and cleaning times were reduced, and fewer errors were found. Data are compiled and available within hours of collection facilitating data quality assurance.
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    Final technical report : developer network and open source PDA software for health data; reporting period: 1 March 2006 - 28 February 2008
    (South African Medical Research Council, Capetown, ZA, 2009) Seebregts, Chris
    This project successfully developed an open source software application for mobile health data collection on handheld computers (personal digital assistants or PDAs), as well as simultaneously developing the OpenMRS Implementers Network. More effort and resources need to be invested in community-building activities in order to ensure that a particular project is adopted by the community, and so that open source projects are largely community-driven. Meaningful involvement with marginalized groups, including women, might be enhanced by twinning groups with project team members in an in-project mentoring relationship.
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    OpenMRS Implementers Network
    (Biomedical Informatics Research Division, Medical Research Council, Cape Town, ZA, 2007) Seebregts, Christopher J.; Mamlin, Burke W.; Biondich, Paul G.; Fraser, Hamish S.F.; Wolfe, Benjamin A.; OpenMRS Implementers Group
    OpenMRS (www.openmrs.org) is a highly configurable open source electronic medical record system focused on developing countries. An international collaboration of individuals and institutions is contributing to developing and extending the core application and a network of implementers is configuring specific implementations of OpenMRS for treating and managing care for patients with HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis at sites in Eastern and Southern Africa. Support is critical for successful implementation and an OpenMRS implementers group has been formed driven by developers of OpenMRS with initial implementers from Kenya, Rwanda and South Africa and pilot implementers in Lesotho, Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. The OpenMRS implementers group not only provides a first line of support to other implementers, but also performs functional testing and documentation. Support for local customizations is mainly provided through the OpenMRS Wiki, forum, and two e-mail mailing lists. The mailing lists are fairly active and responsive to issues arising during implementation, allowing a reasonably high level of support to be maintained for specific in country implementations, and are supplemented with regular implementer meetings. Three meetings were held during 2006, in Eldoret, Cape Town and Dar-Es-Salaam. The first meeting of 2007 will take place in Mali during the Helina 2007 conference.
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    Development of an integrated database and data collation system for monitoring and evaluating the public sector antiretroviral treatment (ART) in the Free State province, South Africa
    (International AIDS Society (IAS), Geneva, CH, 2006) Fairall, L.; Staniland, G.; Msimanga, M.; Timmerman, V.; Goedele, L.
    ISSUES: Paper-based structured clinical records are widely used for monitoring and evaluating the public sector HIV antiretroviral (ART) treatment program in South Africa. Computerized systems are sometimes used for operational data capture but are usually limited to individual clinics and hospitals. Important information also exists in other databases. A requirement exists to collate information into electronic format and integrate data from a variety of sources to facilitate reporting and quality controls. DESCRIPTION: Handheld computers (PDA's) were used to collate data from paper records at urban and rural sites during the first nine months of the ART roll-out program in the Free State province of South Africa. Thereafter a commercial online computer system (Meditech) was implemented. A Microsoft SQL Server 2000 database server was used to deploy the information into a relational and dimensional format using Microsoft Data Transformation Services. External laboratory and resistance data were integrated as well. After 18 months 19013 patients were registered on the system, of which 2743 were ART patients. A total of 143751 forms have been captured with a median of 4 forms/non- ARV patient and 26 forms/ARV patient. Six quality categories with a total of 32 quality routines were implemented. The system has also been used to compile quarterly reports and national indicators. LESSONS LEARNED: PDAs compare favourably with online systems for data collection from remote rural and urban sites and are useful where online systems or connectivity are lacking. Dimensional data modelling and data warehousing techniques are fundamental for creating databases that are optimized for querying, aggregated reporting, longitudinal analysis and research. RECOMMENDATIONS: Data quality remains the most challenging aspect of information systems for monitoring and evaluation. The next phase will be to feed information back to the health care workers and patients to give them the benefit of information systems and to encourage better input data quality.
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    Free State informatics project outputs : outcomes and lessons learned
    (UCT Lung Institute, Cape Town, ZA, 2009) University of Cape Town (UCT), Lung Institute
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    Télémédecine au Sénégal : prendre internet pour ne plus prendre la route
    (Association canadienne française pour l'avancement des sciences, Montréal, QC, CA, 1999) Fontaine, L.