By Azhar Razak
Sri Lanka’s ICT policy think tank, LIRNEasia has urged Sri Lanka to implement a ‘real-time bio-surveillance programme’ (RTBP) which uses mobile phones for sharing information following its successful completion of a recent pilot research project.
The findings of the research survey shows that implementation of the project could enable early detection and notification of potential health outbreaks (more importantly some killer communicable diseases) while at the same time reducing costs by 30 percent as the system only uses mobile phones, software applications and a Web interface.
“I am proud to say that we are extremely pleased that the research and pilot project has led to the unprecedented milestone of a significant improvement in capturing and documenting health information. We now have solid proven evidence to support RTBP as an important tool in preventing the spread of devastating diseases. Had these monitoring systems been in place before, we would have prevented the deaths of many,” Nuwan Waidyanathan, Senior Research Manager, LlRNEasia, told a press conference recently.
Some of the findings from the project noted that respiratory infectious diseases are the most common in Sri Lanka, common cold is the most popular but gastrointestinal infectious are, relatively, the most visible, people over 45 years are most vulnerable to both hypertension (high blood pressure) and Diabetes-Mellitus.
RTBP is designed to collect timely relevant health surveillance data and to process this data in order to reliably and quickly detect possible outbreaks of diseases. The pilot project carried out with the aid of a grant of US $ 300,000 from the International Development Research Centre, Canada, was tested out in 12 hospitals and clinics in the Kurunegala District from July 2008 onwards accumulating an average of 7,200 records per week or 300,000 patient records in total.
“They detected 25 prioritised infectious diseases like dengue, malaria and dysentery. They were also the first to utilise other options of investigating other communicable like common colds and non-communicable diseases like diabetes or arthritis,” Waidyanathan said.
Cost reduction
The research which was also carried out simultaneously in South India also concluded that Sri Lanka could reduce its overall expenses by 30 percent with RTBP while India could reduce by 50 percent. It further noted that both India and Sri Lanka presently dedicate very little or no resources to event detection or alerting and that RTBP allows allocating more resources to the upkeep of situational awareness and to crisis response activity
“Bulk of the health departments expenses are spent on data collection and consolidation. They can be reduced by RTBP with the introduction of mHealth at the point of care,” the research findings pointed out.
The research paper urged authorities to invest more in alerting to empower health workers with information on the state of affairs of the health in their regions.
“Following a feasibility analysis, researchers have found that the project would require US $12,000 per month per district to be implemented island wide in Sri Lanka,” Waidyanathan noted.
Technical aspects
mHealthSurvey software works on any available standard java mobile phone. A typical record contains the patient visitation date, location, gender, age, disease, symptoms, and signs. Data is transmitted over GPRS cellular networks. T-Cube Web Interface (TCWI) is an Internet browser based tool to visualise and manipulate large spatio-temporal data sets. Epidemiologists can pin down a potential outbreak of, for instance, a gastrointestinal disease among children in the Wariyapola. Sahana Alerting Module (SAM) allows for the generic dissemination of localised and standardised interoperable messages. Selected groups of recipients would receive the single-entry of the message via SMS, Email, and Web.
“The key paradigm of the bio-surveillance programme is not just about computerising the present day processes but it is about complementing them with revolutionary techniques like “syndromic” surveillance. RTBP’s real time bio surveillance capabilities will enhance the present day passive or non-active passive surveillance to an active surveillance system,” Wayamba Provincial Director of Health Services, Dr. R. M. S. K. Ratnayake said.
He added that since the manner in which responses are sent back to health workers follow a global standard recognised by the International Telecommunications Union, RTBP makes it possible for information dissemination with other national organisations such as the boarder control health authorities as well as across borders with neighbouring countries or global organisations.
Sri Lanka’s ICT policy think tank, LIRNEasia has urged Sri Lanka to implement a ‘real-time bio-surveillance programme’ (RTBP) which uses mobile phones for sharing information following its successful completion of a recent pilot research project.
The findings of the research survey shows that implementation of the project could enable early detection and notification of potential health outbreaks (more importantly some killer communicable diseases) while at the same time reducing costs by 30 percent as the system only uses mobile phones, software applications and a Web interface.
“I am proud to say that we are extremely pleased that the research and pilot project has led to the unprecedented milestone of a significant improvement in capturing and documenting health information. We now have solid proven evidence to support RTBP as an important tool in preventing the spread of devastating diseases. Had these monitoring systems been in place before, we would have prevented the deaths of many,” Nuwan Waidyanathan, Senior Research Manager, LlRNEasia, told a press conference recently.
Some of the findings from the project noted that respiratory infectious diseases are the most common in Sri Lanka, common cold is the most popular but gastrointestinal infectious are, relatively, the most visible, people over 45 years are most vulnerable to both hypertension (high blood pressure) and Diabetes-Mellitus.
RTBP is designed to collect timely relevant health surveillance data and to process this data in order to reliably and quickly detect possible outbreaks of diseases. The pilot project carried out with the aid of a grant of US $ 300,000 from the International Development Research Centre, Canada, was tested out in 12 hospitals and clinics in the Kurunegala District from July 2008 onwards accumulating an average of 7,200 records per week or 300,000 patient records in total.
“They detected 25 prioritised infectious diseases like dengue, malaria and dysentery. They were also the first to utilise other options of investigating other communicable like common colds and non-communicable diseases like diabetes or arthritis,” Waidyanathan said.
Cost reduction
The research which was also carried out simultaneously in South India also concluded that Sri Lanka could reduce its overall expenses by 30 percent with RTBP while India could reduce by 50 percent. It further noted that both India and Sri Lanka presently dedicate very little or no resources to event detection or alerting and that RTBP allows allocating more resources to the upkeep of situational awareness and to crisis response activity
“Bulk of the health departments expenses are spent on data collection and consolidation. They can be reduced by RTBP with the introduction of mHealth at the point of care,” the research findings pointed out.
The research paper urged authorities to invest more in alerting to empower health workers with information on the state of affairs of the health in their regions.
“Following a feasibility analysis, researchers have found that the project would require US $12,000 per month per district to be implemented island wide in Sri Lanka,” Waidyanathan noted.
Technical aspects
mHealthSurvey software works on any available standard java mobile phone. A typical record contains the patient visitation date, location, gender, age, disease, symptoms, and signs. Data is transmitted over GPRS cellular networks. T-Cube Web Interface (TCWI) is an Internet browser based tool to visualise and manipulate large spatio-temporal data sets. Epidemiologists can pin down a potential outbreak of, for instance, a gastrointestinal disease among children in the Wariyapola. Sahana Alerting Module (SAM) allows for the generic dissemination of localised and standardised interoperable messages. Selected groups of recipients would receive the single-entry of the message via SMS, Email, and Web.
“The key paradigm of the bio-surveillance programme is not just about computerising the present day processes but it is about complementing them with revolutionary techniques like “syndromic” surveillance. RTBP’s real time bio surveillance capabilities will enhance the present day passive or non-active passive surveillance to an active surveillance system,” Wayamba Provincial Director of Health Services, Dr. R. M. S. K. Ratnayake said.
He added that since the manner in which responses are sent back to health workers follow a global standard recognised by the International Telecommunications Union, RTBP makes it possible for information dissemination with other national organisations such as the boarder control health authorities as well as across borders with neighbouring countries or global organisations.
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