September Meeting Recap:Moving from Paper to Digital
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Our September monthly meeting focused on moving from paper to digital Four experts highlighted how they have supported programs that have made this transition adding insight and lessons learned for others to consider as they navigate this transition in their own projects Judith Nguimfack Tsague opened the meeting to share her experiences working with K4Health and other partners to assist the Ministry of Health in Senegal to establish an eHealth Catalogue in 2015 The goal of this catalogue was for the MOH to identify and document key eHealth initiatives and have a dynamic tool a central repository which could be shared with stakeholders and serve as a decision support tool The establishment of the digital database was part of the development of the national eHealth Strategy for which K4Health led efforts to bring all stakeholders to the proverbial table and provide key knowledge management to support digital health governance Judith and her stakeholders adapted the WHO mHealth Technical Evidence and Review Group s mHealth taxonomy as applied on mHealth Evidence to develop catalogue content and utilized Google Forms for continuous data collection The IT unit at the MOH managed the Google Form for four categories of stakeholders government implementing partners donors and the private sector Several challenges noted were the limited information available on existing projects and the fact that many key MOH stakeholders were unfamiliar with eHealth Governance about who would ultimately have access to the content has also been a roadblock into the catalogue being realized as an interactive tool for the various stakeholder groups Though the catalogue is online today only the MOH has access to the information A delay in the launch of the eHealth strategy has prolonged the finalization of the eHealth Catalogue At a recent workshop the database was presented and there is renewed momentum at the MOH to open access of the repository for other stakeholders Next up was Evelyn Castle Director and Co Founder of eHealth Africa who presented on the theme of data driven solutions alongside the paper to digital transition The Polio Vaccinator Tracking System was launched in Northern Nigeria to replace paper forms Many of the data collectors working in very remote areas were illiterate and could not complete the forms To mitigate this challenge the data collectors take trackers with them when they go out to the villages No data needs to be entered the trackers use GPS coordinates to document what villages were and were not reached Some of these same tools were modified for contact tracing during the Ebola Response in West Africa In this case there was greater digital literacy so data collectors could add more information such as a person s temperature and symptoms alongside the geolocation codes By using a mix of online and offline tools these trackers were able to collect an immense amount of real time data Evelyn talked about the mind shift of using digital data especially in environments where people were traditionally more comfortable with paper Though many of us may be eager to see sophisticated dashboards with a lot of information for decision making it takes coaching and mentorship for novice stakeholders to understand and effectively utilize these tools Another lesson learned that Evelyn shares was keep it simple She referenced an eHealth program on logistics management where smart phones were used to collect data As eHealth wanted to improve upon the tool in working with their users they found their ideas for updates were not preferred by those using the tools in the field They liked the simplicity of the beta version This is an excellent demonstration of first Principle for Digital Development Design with the User One final lesson from the presentation since using digital tools enables users to collect data more often digital reminders help to assist in up to date data collection since people are generally not in the habit of entering data as frequently James Pringle from PMA2020 was our next speaker with three key messages Keep it simple Go Open Source and Think Digitally James highlighted PMA2020 s work collecting reproductive health and family planning data via smart phones to have more information about key indicators such as contraceptive prevalence and unmet need The project funded by Bill and Melinda Gates currently operates in 10 countries and is growing A Resident Enumerator a local woman is the data collector who uses an Android Phone to collect information from villages PMA2020 uses ODK as its data collection tool and before offering training to the resident enumerators they set up all of the devices to ensure a faster process Like Evelyn James echoed that simplicity is important since many data collectors are new to using digital tools James offered that using digital tools for survey data collection has many advantages over paper in addition to getting data faster and it being easier to analyze the data often have more accuracy especially if the surveys have built in skip logic and data validation On paper skip logic can be cumbersome but digital tools make this very easy and can mitigate errors Like eHealth Africa GPS data is harnessed in data collection to ensure the location of the data collected is correct another error that paper tools cannot account for All of PMA2020 s data can be accessed online and key data points can be viewed in the PMA2020 Datalab Our final speaker was Katherine Stanfill from the Emory University Center for Global Safe WASH Katherine spoke about two projects The first SaniPath is an exposure assessment tool to identify how people are exposed to fecal contamination in urban environments Some of the challenges WASH programs find with using paper are similar to other programs including accuracy of information or language barriers but there are also challenges of wet or damaged forms because of the nature of the data collected SaniPath allowed the data to be accessible to all team members digitally so that custom dashboards could be built in real time for field managers The data was used to inform the Emory team on relevant exposure pathways including open drains drinking water surface waters public latrines soils wastewater irrigated produce and floodwater The team was able to create risk profiles to show which pathway contributes to the greatest risk in each neighborhood and where interventions could have the greatest impact on reducing exposure to fecal contamination Katherine also presented on a GE Project that monitors WASH in healthcare facilities Launched in Ghana Honduras and Rwanda as a paper survey the tool has been transitioned to a digital data collection tool for use in Cambodia and Uganda Originally ODK was used in the development but it has since transitioned to CommCare so that cases can be tracked over time Monitoring and evaluation is conducted via digital data collection collecting data on water filtration systems functionality and water quality Data is also collected for two in house tools WASHCon and a Sustainability Metric In the spirit of sharing lessons learned Katherine said maintaining an open dialogue with partners in the field is important when implementing and using digital tools If you have any questions or comments about these presentations or the Paper to Mobile transition please respond to the Network members Some very lively discussion took place among our participants including using the ODK scan to incorporate paper forms into digital analysis and data entry of paper information so dashboards have more information over time What are your experiences and salient lessons learned Next month our meeting on October 21 will focus on interoperability of health information systems This topic even came up in our September meeting when Evelyn emphasized the importance of a health facility registry so that digital tools can be interoperable Our October meeting will be the last meeting of the year Registration will open October 1st for the event If you have suggestions for topics to focus on in 2017 please let Heidi and I know Finally don t forget to register for the Global Digital Health Forum Early registration which includes a discount on your registration fee ends on September 30 just extended Cheers Heidi Amanda
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