User patterns of the Safe Delivery App; explorations from a cluster randomized controlled trial in Ethiopia

Abstract

Background Given the rapidly evolving field of mobile health to improve the quality of low-resource health services, we aimed to evaluate the user patterns of the Safe Delivery App, mHealth clinical training tool in Basic Emergency Obstetric and Neonatal Care, among health workers in Ethiopia. Methods Sixty-one health workers were included from the intervention arm of the cluster randomized controlled trial of the Safe Delivery App, a teaching aid using animated movies to improve quality of obstetric and neonatal care. Observational data on user patterns was collected from November 2013 to November 2014 in five rural districts in Ethiopia and automatically registered by GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) or GPS (Global Positioning System) network. The registered information included topic of movie and the movie sub chapter being watched as well as the date, time and location of the usage. Results During the 12-months trial period, 61 health workers watched in total 20,049 training sub chapters. The app was used frequently with an average of 26 sub chapters viewed per health worker in a month. A sustained level of usage throughout all 24 hours of the day was seen. The health workers were particularly interested in strengthening their ability in giving an uterotonic drug and managing the newborn’s airway with almost twice as many views when compared to the other videos. Conclusions User patterns showed consistent and frequent usage of the Safe Delivery App throughout the 12 months trial period. Our findings highlight the relevance of innovative training methods for health workers in low-resource countries.