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.
Highlights
A National Immunization Programme Review referred to as Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) Review, is a comprehensive assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of an immunization programme at national, subnational and servicedelivery levels, with the sole aim of providing evidence to guide programme’s strategic directions and prioritizing activities[7]
A total of 5 countries in the sub-region were selected and included in the study based on the criteria of whether a country had used paper based or electronic Open Data Kit (ODK) based questionnaires during the most recent EPI review that was conducted between September 2017 to September 2018
The use of the mobile based android device in the conduct of the EPI reviews had shown a significant improvement in the timeliness and completeness of the data, with real-time submission of the data from the field as seen in the table below; We noticed from the result that the timeliness and completeness of the data is greater than 95% in all the countries that implemented, proportion of errors found on the data after collation has improved with an average of 0.01 to 0.003, while number of days taken to collate the data for analysis is 1 day
Summary
A National Immunization Programme Review referred to as Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) Review, is a comprehensive assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of an immunization programme at national, subnational and servicedelivery levels, with the sole aim of providing evidence to guide programme’s strategic directions and prioritizing activities[7]. During previous EPI reviewed a standard paper based questionnaires were used to collect information which requires further collation and analysis which is labourous and time consuming[7]. Paper-based system requires data to be entered manually leading to errors in the data, delays in data cleaning and analysis which does not facilitate availability of information same day and real time[8,12]. A study in Pemba (Zanzibar- Tanzania) raises concerns of time interval between data collection and checking, leading to delay in resolving the data issues. It noted omission errors and illogical data, as well as inconsistency in enrolment criteria resulting in missing eligible clients which had made the tracking of the proportion of clients missed difficult[12].
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