Implementation of Mobile Phone Data Collection in the Conduct EPI Comprehensive Review in East and Southern African Countries

Abstract

Mobile phone data collection tools are increasingly becoming very usable collecting, collating and analysing data in the health sector. In this paper, we documented the experiences with mobile phone data collection, collation and analysis in 5 countries of the East and Southern African, using Open Data Kit (ODK), where questionnaires were designed and coded on an XML form, uploaded and data collected using Android-Based mobile phones, with a web-based system to monitor data in real-time during EPI comprehensive review. The ODK interface supports in real-time monitoring of the flow of data, detection of missing or incomplete data, coordinate location of all locations visited, embedded charts for basic analysis. It also minimized data quality errors at entry level with the use of validation codes and constraint developed into the checklist. These benefits, combined with the improvement that mobile phones offer over paper-based in terms of timeliness, data loss, collation, and real-time data collection, analysis and uploading difficulties, make mobile phone data collection a feasible method of data collection that needs to be further explored in the conduct of all surveys in the organization.

Figure 1. Screen shots of a questionnaire on the mobile phone.

Figure 2. Sample output of exporting the data to an external application (e.g. EXCEL) to be analysed

Figure 3. Sample output of the interface showing locations visited and number of records per site visited in charts

Figure 4. Extract of Exported output showing the start time, end time and duration of the questionnaire