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Smartphones for community health in rural Cambodia: A feasibility study
Background: Village Malaria Workers (VMWs) are lay people trained to provide a valuable role in frontline testing and treatment of malaria in rural villages in Cambodia. Emergence of artemisinin-resistant malaria highlights the essential role of such VMWs in surveillance and early treatment of malar...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
F1000 Research Limited
2018
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6069733/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30116791 http://dx.doi.org/10.12688/wellcomeopenres.13751.1 |
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author | Ngor, Pengby White, Lisa J. Chalk, Jeremy Lubell, Yoel Favede, Cecelia Cheah, Phaik-Yeong Nguon, Chea Ly, Po Maude, Richard J. Sovannaroth, Siv Day, Nicholas P. Dunachie, Susanna |
author_facet | Ngor, Pengby White, Lisa J. Chalk, Jeremy Lubell, Yoel Favede, Cecelia Cheah, Phaik-Yeong Nguon, Chea Ly, Po Maude, Richard J. Sovannaroth, Siv Day, Nicholas P. Dunachie, Susanna |
author_sort | Ngor, Pengby |
collection | PubMed |
description | Background: Village Malaria Workers (VMWs) are lay people trained to provide a valuable role in frontline testing and treatment of malaria in rural villages in Cambodia. Emergence of artemisinin-resistant malaria highlights the essential role of such VMWs in surveillance and early treatment of malaria. Smartphone technology offers huge potential to support VMWs in isolated and resource-poor settings. Methods: We investigated the feasibility of issuing established VMWs with a smartphone, bespoke Android application and solar charger to support their role. 27 VMWs in Kampong Cham and Kratie provinces participated. Results: 26/27 of the smartphones deployed were working well at study completion twelve months later. Interviews with VMWs using quantitative and qualitative methods revealed pride, ease of use and reports of faster communication with the smartphone. VMWs also expressed a strong wish to help people presenting with non-malarial fever, for which further potential supportive smartphone applications are increasingly available. Conclusions: As a result of this pilot study, two smartphone based reporting systems for malaria have been developed at the Cambodian National Malaria Center, and the programme is now being extended nationwide. The full code for the smartphone application is made available to other researchers and healthcare providers with this article. Smartphones represent a feasible platform for developing the VMW role to include other health conditions, thus maintaining the relevance of these important community health workers. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6069733 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2018 |
publisher | F1000 Research Limited |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-60697332018-08-15 Smartphones for community health in rural Cambodia: A feasibility study Ngor, Pengby White, Lisa J. Chalk, Jeremy Lubell, Yoel Favede, Cecelia Cheah, Phaik-Yeong Nguon, Chea Ly, Po Maude, Richard J. Sovannaroth, Siv Day, Nicholas P. Dunachie, Susanna Wellcome Open Res Research Article Background: Village Malaria Workers (VMWs) are lay people trained to provide a valuable role in frontline testing and treatment of malaria in rural villages in Cambodia. Emergence of artemisinin-resistant malaria highlights the essential role of such VMWs in surveillance and early treatment of malaria. Smartphone technology offers huge potential to support VMWs in isolated and resource-poor settings. Methods: We investigated the feasibility of issuing established VMWs with a smartphone, bespoke Android application and solar charger to support their role. 27 VMWs in Kampong Cham and Kratie provinces participated. Results: 26/27 of the smartphones deployed were working well at study completion twelve months later. Interviews with VMWs using quantitative and qualitative methods revealed pride, ease of use and reports of faster communication with the smartphone. VMWs also expressed a strong wish to help people presenting with non-malarial fever, for which further potential supportive smartphone applications are increasingly available. Conclusions: As a result of this pilot study, two smartphone based reporting systems for malaria have been developed at the Cambodian National Malaria Center, and the programme is now being extended nationwide. The full code for the smartphone application is made available to other researchers and healthcare providers with this article. Smartphones represent a feasible platform for developing the VMW role to include other health conditions, thus maintaining the relevance of these important community health workers. F1000 Research Limited 2018-06-12 /pmc/articles/PMC6069733/ /pubmed/30116791 http://dx.doi.org/10.12688/wellcomeopenres.13751.1 Text en Copyright: © 2018 Ngor P et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Ngor, Pengby White, Lisa J. Chalk, Jeremy Lubell, Yoel Favede, Cecelia Cheah, Phaik-Yeong Nguon, Chea Ly, Po Maude, Richard J. Sovannaroth, Siv Day, Nicholas P. Dunachie, Susanna Smartphones for community health in rural Cambodia: A feasibility study |
title | Smartphones for community health in rural Cambodia: A feasibility study |
title_full | Smartphones for community health in rural Cambodia: A feasibility study |
title_fullStr | Smartphones for community health in rural Cambodia: A feasibility study |
title_full_unstemmed | Smartphones for community health in rural Cambodia: A feasibility study |
title_short | Smartphones for community health in rural Cambodia: A feasibility study |
title_sort | smartphones for community health in rural cambodia: a feasibility study |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6069733/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30116791 http://dx.doi.org/10.12688/wellcomeopenres.13751.1 |
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