Software support for creating digital health training materials in the field

Abstract

In this paper, we present the design, implementation, and deployment of a tool developed to help rural health trainers to create digital training content for low-literate Community Health Workers (CHWs) in Lesotho; the digital content being mobile videos created from combining images, voice-over, and/or video clips. Our results show that when health professionals who are based in rural areas were empowered by the tool to create their own content, they were able to supplement nationally and globally produced health training materials with more locally relevant content that addresses unique information needs within their communities. We discuss other lessons learned from an eightmonths deployment of this tool in Lesotho, and conclude with recommendations on how a similar project can be implemented in other developing regions.

Syrian Refugees and Digital Health in Lebanon

“…Previous work on the design of digital maternal health in India has mostly targeted women with only access to feature phones [2,18,19,24,33]. However, our findings indicate a high penetration of smartphones among Syrian refugees in rural Lebanon.…”

“…Ramachandran et al [28] provided social workers with persuasive health messages on their phones to be used during counselling sessions. In similar contexts, community-led video education systems allowed social workers to compose locally relevant health education videos [19,24] which can then be viewed by women in the community. Tiwari and Sorathia [32] used an audio visual application that allows mothers of low literacy to call for emergency services and identify, through pictures, their health problems.…”

“…A number of women emphasized their enthusiasm for using mobile phones to develop a loosely coupled integration with PHCs that would facilitate an appointment system. Such an approach would deviate from previous designs that focus on management and control by social and healthcare workers [2,18,21,24,29,33]. Likewise, in a manner similar to the use of digital storytelling to advocate for Palestinian youth [39], there is real potential for digital platforms to have a dual role in sharing the experiences of women among themselves and documenting the experiences for the purposes of health advocacy.…”

Projecting health

“…Fiore-Silfvast et al [9] studied the use of mobile videos by midwives for patient education during postnatal care examinations. Molapo and Marsden [22] designed a tool to aid rural health trainers in creating instructional videos for training low-literate Community Health Workers in Lesotho. Mathur et al [19] explored the feasibility of creating and presenting digital content using mobile phones and pico projectors.…”

How to choose a mobile phone for an ICT4D project

“…The Bophelo Haeso project started in 2011 in Lesotho, with the initial aim of helping rural-based nurses to create and distribute non-textual reference materials to community health workers (CHWs) on their mobile phones [11]. The project provided Nokia C2-01 phones for the CHWs involved in the study, but in addition to these, CHWs who already owned other multimedia-capable phones joined to participate as well.…”