The continent has become a real digital health laboratory. In Goma, Congo, MSF has launched a monitoring project through cell phones
Africa has now turned into a huge digital health laboratory. The vast distances, the scarcity of resources, the very young population are all contributing factors to the boom. In the field of humanitarian organizations, for example,
Doctors without borders
He developed
(together with the MSF Foundation, Epicenter and some volunteer engineers from Google.org) electronic platforms in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. These are free tools available in open source, that is publicly accessible, which intend to support the surveillance components of the Ministries of Health or to improve the individual follow-up of patients by sending simple questionnaires via SMS.
The situation after the outbreak of the pandemic
In Goma, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, MSF assists 3,000 patients with HIV or tuberculosis. To avoid the risks of contagion from Sars-Cov-2 and to maintain the monitoring of patients, the MSF Foundation has developed Afia Yetu SMS application (Nostra salute in Italian). We asked Justin Sadikinursing manager of the HIV project in Goma, to explain how this idea was born. After the start of the Covid-19 pandemic and following the new measures imposed by the health authorities – social distancing, lockdown, use of the mask – the people with HIV from the Goma project found themselves isolated from the operators and doctors. So we started organizing a breakdown of appointments to try to limit hospital visits that are a possible risk for the fragile population, to distribute cloth masks and soap. Unable to predict the duration and intensity of the epidemic, MSF then started developing an app to allow healthcare professionals to remotely monitor patients.
The design
How did you design the app? Application design began in April 2020, coordinated by the MSF Foundation and in collaboration with Medic Mobile, a non-profit organization that develops software for public health projects in low-resource countries. In addition, MSF medical staff members, the entire project team from Goma and a group of HIV-positive patients living in Goma participated. The project is based on a bidirectional SMS messaging system in which each patient receives questions via SMS adapted to his individual profile and the answers are processed by the platform which alerts a team member of any problems, suggesting the actions to be taken, adds Sadiki.
First step: raise awareness among patients
The implementation of the app started with the raising awareness of patients on the need to use a remote monitoring application. Initially 30 patients participated in the development of the application. Patients receive automatic SMS messages to which they respond based on their condition. The medical staff, who manage the application, installed on their phone, send a response to patients based on their health conditions. The Foundation is still making changes but as soon as it is perfected the application will be able to be widespread on a large scale.
The obstacles
Surely one of the main obstacles to accessing devices and / or electricity. More than 60 percent of the patients we follow do not have a phone, and many of those who do live in places where sometimes there is no electricity and therefore cannot always recharge it. As for security, some have their phones stolen, while due to the socio-economic context some patients are forced to sell their phones. This can cause an interruption in the follow-up process: today you may have a patient registered in the application who becomes unreachable after some time.
Memberships and results
How many patients have joined? To date, we have more than 850 patients who are registered and have already given their consent to be monitored remotely. What results have you achieved? still early to talk about results because we are still in a pilot phase, but the feedback we are receiving from the 30 patients we are following is satisfactory. Through this system, people feel cared for despite being at home in a particular context such as this pandemic, and therefore they are not obliged to go to the facilities to meet their doctor. With this system they can interact directly from a distance with the operators. this is exactly what makes the other patients on the waiting list can’t wait to use the apphe concludes.
February 18, 2022 (change February 18, 2022 | 16:44)
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