Development and On-Field Deployment of a Mobile-Based Application ‘MoSQuIT’ for Malaria Surveillance in International Border Districts of Northeast India—Challenges and Opportunities

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

卷:19

Lakshmi Panat¹  Ganesh Karajkhede¹  Sudhanshu Hari Das Debnath¹  Rubal Chandra Das²  Subrata Baidya³  Hemkanta Boro⁴  Devojit Kumar Sarma⁵  Keisham Meitei⁶  Pradyumna K. Mohapatra⁶  Santanu Kumar Goswami⁶  Rahul Neog⁶  Sujit Biswas⁶  Jayanta Debnath⁶  Sukanta Acharjee⁶  Saurav Jyoti Patgiri⁶  Ipsita Pal Bhowmick⁶  Susmita Senapati⁶  Dibya Ranjan Bhattacharyya⁶  Prabal Nath⁶  Jagadish Mahanta⁶  Kongkona Gogoi⁶  Gunenja Gobinda Gohain⁶  Satya Ranjan Debbarma⁷  Harpreet Kaur⁸  Ajit Sarma⁹  Dinesh Debbarma⁹  Rahim A. Ahmed¹⁰ 

[1] Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Pune 411007, India;

[2] Changlang District Hospital, Changlang 792120, India;

[3] Department of Community Medicine, Agartala Government Medical College, Agartala 799006, India;

[4] Department of Health & Family Welfare, Tamulpur, Baksa 781367, India;

[5] ICMR-National Institute for Research in Environmental Health, Bhopal 462030, India;

[6] ICMR-Regional Medical Research Centre, North East Region, Dibrugarh 786010, India;

[7] Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), Agartala 799006, India;

[8] Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), New Delhi 110029, India;

[9] National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme, Dhalai 799289, India;

[10] National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme, Udalguri 784509, India;

关键词: malaria;    MoSQuIT;    surveillance;    NVBDCP;    Plasmodium falciparum;    Plasmodium vivax;   

DOI  :  10.3390/ijerph19052561

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

The conventional paper-based system for malaria surveillance is time-consuming, difficult to track and resource-intensive. Few digital platforms are in use but wide-scale deployment and acceptability remain to be seen. To address this issue, we created a malaria surveillance mobile app that offers real-time data to stakeholders and establishes a centralised data repository. The MoSQuIT app was designed to collect data from the field and was integrated with a web-based platform for data integration and analysis. The MoSQuIT app was deployed on mobile phones of accredited social health activists (ASHA) working in international border villages in the northeast (NE) Indian states of Assam, Tripura and Arunachal Pradesh for 20 months in a phased manner. This paper shares the challenges and opportunities associated with the use of MoSQuIT for malaria surveillance. MoSQuIT employs the same data entry formats as the NVBDCP’s malaria surveillance programme. Using this app, a total of 8221 fever cases were recorded, which included 1192 (14.5%) cases of P. falciparum malaria, 280 (3.4%) cases of P. vivax malaria and 52 (0.6%) mixed infection cases. Depending on network availability, GPS coordinates of the fever cases were acquired by the app. The present study demonstrated that mobile-phone-based malaria surveillance facilitates the quick transmission of data from the field to decision makers. Geospatial tagging of cases helped with easy visualisation of the case distribution for the identification of malaria-prone areas and potential outbreaks, especially in hilly and remote regions of Northeast India. However, to achieve the full operational potential of the system, operational challenges have to be overcome.

【 授权许可】

Unknown