Public health surveillance systems are constantly facing challenges of epidemics and shortage in the health care workforce. These challenges are more pronounced in developing countries, which bear the greatest burden of disease and where new pathogens are more likely to emerge, old ones to reemerge and drug-resistant strains to propagate. In August 2008, a mobile phone based surveillance system was piloted in 6 of the 23 districts in the state of AP in India. Health workers in 3832 hospitals and health centers used mobile phones to send reports to and receive information from the nationwide Integrated Disease Surveillance Project (IDSP). Like in many other states, the IDSP in AP is facing many operational constraints like lack of human resource, irregular supply of logistics, hard to reach health facilities, poor coordination with various health programs and poor linkages with non-state stakeholders. The mobile phone based surveillance system was an attempt to tackle some of the barriers to improving the IDSP by capitalizing on the exponential growth in numbers as well as reach of mobile phones in the state. Promising results from the pilot of the system led AP state to extend it to about 16,000 reporting units in all 23 districts. This study evaluates how the system has affected the efficiency and effectiveness of IDSP in the state.
Objective
To assess the impact of use of mobile phones use on the efficiency and effectiveness of the Integrated Disease Surveillance Project (IDSP) in the state of Andhra Pradesh (AP)