ArticleBMC medical informatics and decision making2020
Design and implementation of a mobile health electronic data capture platform that functions in fully-disconnected settings: a pilot study in rural Liberia.
Article in BMC medical informatics and decision making, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed, 13 citations in OpenAlex.
- Use of Mobile Forms in Low-Resource Areas for Population Health Surveys: Interview and Field Test Study.JMIRx med · 2025Article
- Information and Communication Technology to Enhance the Implementation of the Integrated Management of Childhood Illness: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Mayo Clinic proceedings. Digital health · 2024Review
- Crossing the digital divide: the workload of manual data entry and integration between mobile health applications and eHealth infrastructure.Oxford open digital health · 2024Article
- Tailoring Mobile Data Collection for Intervention Research in a Challenging Context: Development and Implementation in the Malakit Study.JMIR formative research · 2022Article
- Toward e-Scales: Digital Administration of the International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society Rating Scales.Movement disorders clinical practice · 2021Article
- Availability and Accessibility of Primary Care for the Remote, Rural, and Poor Population of Indonesia.Frontiers in public health · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundMobile phones and personal digital assistants have been used for data collection in developing world settings for over three decades, and have become increasingly common. However, the use of electronic data capture (EDC) through mobile phones is limited in many areas by inconsistent network connectivity and poor access to electricity, which thwart data transmission and device usage. This is the case in rural Liberia, where many health workers live and work in areas without any access to cellular connectivity or reliable power. Many existing EDC mobile software tools are built for occasionally-disconnected settings, allowing a user to collect data while out of range of a cell tower and transmit data to a central server when he/she regains a network connection. However, few tools exist that can be used indefinitely in fully-disconnected settings, where a user will never have access to the internet or a cell network. This led us to create and implement an EDC software tool that allows for completely offline data transfer and application updating.
resultsWe designed, pilot-tested, and scaled an open-source fork of Open Data Kit Collect (an Android application that can be used to create EDC systems) that allows for offline Bluetooth-based bidirectional data transfer, enabling a system in which permanently-offline users can collect data and receive application updates. We implemented this platform among a cohort of 317 community health workers and 28 supervisors in a remote area of rural Liberia with incomplete cellular connectivity and low access to power sources.
conclusionsRunning a fully-offline EDC program that completely bypasses the cellular network was found to be feasible; the system is still running, over 4 years after the initial pilot program. The users of this program can theoretically collect data offline for months or years, assuming they receive hardware support when needed. Fully-offline EDC has applications in settings where cellular network coverage is poor, as well as in disaster relief settings in which portions of the communications infrastructure may be temporarily nonfunctional.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.