Collecting maternal health information from HIV-positive pregnant women using mobile phone-assisted face-to-face interviews in Southern Africa.
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Date
2013-06-10
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Abstract
BACKGROUND Most of the world s women living with human immunodeficiency virus HIV reside in sub Saharan Africa Although efforts to reduce mother to child transmission are underway obtaining complete and accurate data from rural clinical sites to track progress presents a major challenge OBJECTIVE To describe the acceptability and feasibility of mobile phones as a tool for clinic based face to face data collection with pregnant women living with HIV in South Africa METHODS As part of a larger clinic based trial 16 interviewers were trained to conduct mobile phone assisted personal interviews MPAPI These interviewers participant group 1 completed the same short questionnaire based on items from the Technology Acceptance Model at 3 different time points Questions were asked before training after training and 3 months after deployment to clinic facilities In addition before the start of the primary intervention trial in which this substudy was undertaken 12 mothers living with HIV MLH took part in a focus group discussion exploring the acceptability of MPAPI participant group 2 Finally a sample of MLH n 512 enrolled in the primary trial were asked to assess their experience of being interviewed by MPAPI participant group 3 RESULTS Acceptability of the method was found to be high among the 16 interviewers in group 1 Perceived usefulness was reported to be slightly higher than perceived ease of use across the 3 time points After 3 months of field use interviewer perceptions of both perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness were found to be higher than before training The feasibility of conducting MPAPI interviews in this setting was found to be high Network coverage was available in all clinics and hardware software cost and secure transmission to the data center presented no significant challenges over the 21 month period For the 12 MHL participants in group 2 anxiety about the multimedia capabilities of the phone was evident Their concern centered on the possibility that their privacy may be invaded by interviewers using the mobile phone camera to photograph them For participants in group 3 having the interviewer sit beside vs across from the interviewee during the MPAPI interview was received positively by 94 7 of MHL Privacy 6 3 and confidentiality 5 3 concerns were low for group 3 MHL CONCLUSIONS Mobile phones were found both to be acceptable and feasible in the collection of maternal and child health data from women living with HIV in South Africa TRIAL REGISTRATION Clinicaltrials gov NCT00972699 http clinicaltrials gov ct2 show NCT00972699 Archived by WebCite at http clinicaltrials gov ct2 show NCT00972699
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Keywords
Women (only), At risk for a particular disease or infection, Facility-based health worker, Access to information or data, Acceptability, Pilot, Feasibility, HIV/AIDS, Infectious, parasitic and vector-borne disease, PMTCT, Preventive, Data collection and reporting, Surveillance, Voice, Audio