Center for Health Market Innovations (CHMI)

Programs

HIV Mobile Decision Support

last updated Jan 23, 2012

Overview

Income Level of Target Population: 
All income levels

Funding

Funders: 
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), D-tree International, Dimagi, Harvard University Program on AIDS, Microsoft Research, Pathfinder International, Rockefeller Foundation, University of Washington, World Health Organization (WHO)

Technology

Technology Used: 
PDA/Tablet › Apps/Software, Phones
Technology Purpose: 
Mitigating Fraud & Abuse
Summary: 

The Harvard University Program for AIDS (HUPA) was created to promote and expand research and education on ways to prevent and treat HIV/AIDS. Since 2005, Dimagi has been working with HUPA on a study to developing software to screen HIV/AIDS patients using a handheld mobile device. The study’s goal is to determine the feasibility of using these devices as a screening mechanism to determine a patient’s immediate need for medical care.

Key program components: 

In a pilot study, screening protocols on PDAs were used to reduce the workload of physicians and increase access to high quality care of HIV patients.

The devices will be put to use for a three-month period in hospitals in Tygerberg, South Africa. If successful, use of the devices could be expanded to other areas of screening, triage, and patient diagnosis. This project has been a joint effort among multiple organizations including the Harvard School of Public Health with PI Dr. Marc Mitchell and D-Tree International.

The software is built to run on any Windows Mobile 5 device, including most PDA’s and Windows Mobile Smartphones. An embedded MySql database is used for data storage and manipulation. Additionally, Dimagi has built a web-services synchronization scheme that allows the data to be synchronized with a host computer whenever there is an internet connection available (or by simply connecting it via USB). The software has been designed to be trivial for health workers unfamiliar with computers to adopt, and contains multi-language support.

Additional Information

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