Real Time Health Informatics System for Early Detection and Monitoring of malaria in desert district, Jaisalmer, India

Abstract

Paper describes the development and implementation of an Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS) Technology based health informatics system which can collect information for malaria from grass root level health workers through their mobile phones, save data on database server, generate online analytical and graphical reports and can link data with Geographical Information System (GIS) maps. The Block Pokaran of district Jaisalmer was selected as study area. The system developed has been installed at Desert Medicine Research Centre, Jodhpur and attached to a toll free telephone. The developed system is in operation for more than a year. The grass root level health workers of study area are submitting the primary malaria data through mobile phones to the above system as per the given questionnaire format. 92% of the total data generated was found authentic. The system received 98% reporting from 4 PHCs and 76% reporting from 1 PHC. The system could identify the 8 prime villages out of 181 contributing to 60% of total malaria occurrence, right at initial stage. The developed system has reported disease information in real-time. It is found faster, cost effective, flexible, easy to implement and expandable. The system provides online analytical and graphical reports, facilitate to understand the epidemiology of the disease, its early detection & monitoring, which helps decision makers to take appropriate control measures to intervene before there is any epidemic.