Tag Archives: m-Health
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Beyond the century old disease surveillance and notification in Sri Lanka

The present day disease surveillance and notification system in Sri Lanka, confined to a handful of diseases, known as Notifiable disease, and reporting large numbers of common cases, is what the British introduced in 1897 as part of the quarantine and prevention of diseases ordinance. This paper based surveillance and reporting system has its shortcomings [...]
Health workers don’t need degrees to operate mHealthSurvey

The literarcy rate in Tamil Nadu is above that of the national average. Health workers assisting in the Real-Time Biosurveillance Program (RTBP) in Tamil Nadu, all of whom are female, 68% have 10 years of education and the rest only 12 years of education. They have more than 10 years experience working in the field [...]
Health Officials now see the beauty of real-time biosurveillance
The Sivagangai District (Tamil Nadu, India) Deputy Director of Health Services (DDHS), Dr. Raghupathy, compared the Real-Time Biosurveillance Program (RTBP) to a comprehensive machine with multiple flavors that can give the required surveillance results with the touch of a button. Kurunegala RE (Region Epidemiologist, Sri Lanka), Dr. Hemachandra’s words were “RTBP will give a booster [...]
m-Health real-time biosurveillance pilot showcased in Las Vegas
Auton Lab is a technology partner developing the T-Cube software for the Real-Time Biosurveillance Program. Prof. Artur Dubrawski (Director of Carnegie Mellon Universities Auton Lab) presented the paper: TCube Web Interface for Real-time Biosurveillance in Sri Lanka at the Eight Annual International Society for Disease Surveillance (ISDS) 2009 in Las Vegas, USA, Dec 03-04. The presentation [...]
One of our Partners wins 2009 Infosys Prize

Prof. K. Vijayraghavan, Director of the National Center for Biological Sciences, in Bangalore is one of five recipients of this year’s Infosys Science Foundation prize, given to world-class researchers in social science in India. Along with our friends from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras’s – Rural Technology and Business Incubator, Prof. Vijayraghavan is one [...]
m-Health real-time biosurveillance at e-Asia2009
The health departments and health workers involved in the Real-Time Biosruveillance Program (RTBP) pilot see the benefits in the m-HealthSurvey for real-time data collection, TCube Web Interface for near-real-time outbreak detection, and Sahana Alerting Module for real-time health risk information dissemination. Preliminary lessons to date indicate the need for more robust mobile application for data [...]
Evaluation Guide for Real-Time Biosurveillance Program
The objective of this document: Guidelines for Evaluating RTBP v0.4 is to outline the evaluation methodology for assessing the upstream communication: data collection, data processing: event detection, and downstream communication: alerting/reporting stages (verticals in Figure 1) on the aspects of social, content, application, and technology of a RealTime Biosurveillance Program (RTBP). The blue arrows across [...]
Young Health Workers more likely to adopt the m-HealthSurvey
A m-HealthSurvey Certification Exercise was carried out as part of the m-Health Real-Time Biosurveillance Program (RTBP) to measure the usability and adoptability of the m-HealthSurvey mobile application. The exercise was conducted with health workers in Sivagangai District, Tamil Nadu, India and in Kurunegala District, Sri Lanka. The final results of the exercise will be published [...]
Mobile phone key pad inefficient for high volume health data entry

m-Health Real-Time Biosurveillance Program (RTBP) interviewed Medical Officers in Kurunegal District in Sri Lanka and Sivagangai District in Tamil Nadu, India, during the months of September and October, 2009. These interactions revealed that outpatient health record entry in real-time by Medical Officers, using the mobile phone key pad is inefficient and the idea was rejected [...]
Health Workers express difficulties in m-HealthSurvey
The main problem, identified by India and Sri Lanka health workers, with the Rural technology and Business Incubator (RTBI) developed m-HealthSurvey mobile application, was in the look up content. The application allows for the user to search for a disease name by typing a few characters of the name. Upon selection predefined symptoms and signs [...]
Real-Time Biosurveillance Program Software Requirement Specifications
The Real-Time Biosurveillance Program (RTBP) information communication system comprises an upstream health data submission by last-mile health workers, data processing by epidemiologist, and downstream alerting by health officials.There are four components to the RTBP software: mobile phone application, desktop web application, database, T-Cube analytic tools, and Common Alerting Protocol messaging. The individual components are to [...]
Health Workers fear m-Health may reveal accountability secrets
Village Health Nurses (VHN) are the last-mile health workers attending to the primary health care needs of the rural villagers in the state of Tamil Nadu; where the real-time biosruveillance program (RTBP) is being pilot tested in India. They work under harsh conditions. For instance transportation schedule is limited to a bus that leaves in [...]
RTBP workshop on detecting events in m-Health data
After showcasing our work at ICTD2009 (see poster), where our work: real-time biosurveillance program (RTBP) was highlighted along with Bill Gates in a Qatar media article, Prof. Artur Dubrawski (Director Auton Lab) and I returned to Sri Lanka to engage in work related to our pilot project: RTBP. Prof. Dubrawski’s visit included a workshop on [...]
Suwadana Center Volunteers ready to use RTBP’s m-HealthSurvey
Sixteen Sarovdaya Suwadana Center Volunteers working in the capacity of Research Assistants for the real-time biosurveillance program were trained in the use of the m-HealthSurvey mobile application. The training took place at the Sarvodaya Kuliyapitiya District Center, April 23 – 25, 2009. The three day program comprised lectures on disease surveillance and notification, use of mobile [...]



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