Using Mobile Phones for Data Gathering and Surveying

Overview

Nokia pilot in central Brazil: mobile-based data collection / surveying.

The project was conceived from the need of various public, private and NGO health organizations to gather fast and accurate field data into their legacy systems for data analysis and decision making

The pen-and-paper based forms are outdated as a concept for data gathering, and have many drawbacks, including:

- problems with carrying the necessary papers in and out, especially at remote locations
- potential for mistyping of information when data is transferred into legacy systems
- time span from data gathering to summary generation does not support immediate corrective actions (e.g. during disease outbreaks or out-of-stock situation of medicines)
- data input accuracy is very hard to assess due to handwriting issues and the transfer phase

Objectives

Provide a mobile handset based program that allows more efficient and accurate health data collection by researchers operating in challenging and often under-resourced environments
Support both online and offline data collection, allowing the use in both urban and remote locations
Provide communications tools and rapid access to health surveillance data, so that health decision makers can respond to and prevent disease outbreaks, practice sound resource management, and track public health issues

Technology

The proposed use of mobile technology is intended to bring fast and accurate field data into legacy systems for further analysis and actions.

The project uses currently available hardware and is based on 100% open source software tools.

It includes:

Use Case

Image:Mobisususecase.png

If GSM coverage, phone automatically connects to GSM network (J2ME) then GPRS (internet) to government database servers (Austrian SQL) and data is transferred via J2EE legacy layer (java drivers can help it adapt to any database). If no coverage, can connect via PCMIA card reader to laptop which can connect online (J2SE) to database. See diagram:

Flash card based memory storage. Powerful compression means minimal storage space required / used.

J2ME form with basic elements (as long as can run java on the phone, not reliant on any particular handset type)

Data Collected

Data collected: name, address, health history, vaccinations, household surveys (sanitary conditions, consumption, knowledge of basic livelihood issues), health incidents and guidance

See screens:

Pilots and Lessons

After two pilots in Brazil, we learned:

Sometimes is hard to get maps from locations to plan diseases outbreak surveillance
Our solution along with Google Maps will help field agents to plan which areas (clusters) has to be coverage
And than export the cluster coordinates to the Nokia device creating a virtual fence
During data gather activity, the amount of data as well as the field agent performance and localization can be monitored

Other

6 months development time for mobile application and web service (2 programmers)

Can pull down survey format / structure from the web and download it for free / build upon it to create your own (Episurveyor / Datadyne open source) plus translation software for Mobisus framework to create your own survey

There's a skip logic in EPI Surveyor that has been improved: if have diarrhea-related questions