See CommCare in Action
Watch as our team takes you through the design of a basic
app in CommCare
MOBILE DATA COLLECTION
Infectious Disease
Around the world, CommCare has served as a proven solution for tracking the lifecycle of individual patients from diagnosis, initiation of treatment, adherence monitoring and to end of treatment for infectious diseases like malaria, HIV/AIDS, and tuberculosis. It has also been used in controlling and responding to infectious disease outbreaks like Ebola and Zika.
Using digital solutions, these programs enhanced response rates to infectious diseases, increased diagnostic accuracy and speed in malaria treatment, and improved patient follow-up in HIV and tuberculosis programs.
For example, CommCare has been proven to speed up diagnostic times by 41% over paper-based tools. In one study, prescription calculations were completed 20% more efficiently. This is valuable time saved for providing further care and reaching more patients.
Learn how CommCare helps with monitoring and treating infectious disease
Benefits of Community-Based Service Delivery Solutions
Manage complex workflows at the point of care to promote adherence to clinical decision protocols and improve the quality of diagnosis and treatment.
Spend more time with the patient and less time with paper guides and forms by referencing patient history and training materials directly from the device.
Identify patients, collect longitudinal health information, and create tailored treatment and follow-up plans.
Detect data irregularities and oversee health workers’ activities with supervisory dashboards that help ensure protocol adherence and service coverage.
Easily and securely refer patients and share lab results and patient information between clinics, health facilities, labs, and community health workers.
Gain real-time data access across all stakeholders in the health care system and manage data access permissions for all actors based on role.
Provide treatment recommendations and enhance behavior change communication with locally-adaptable multimedia and communication capabilities.
Send automatic activity reminders to help frontline workers prioritize cases, while SMS messages remind patients of appointments and treatment protocols.
Mobile Apps Can Help Fight Infectious Disease
Featured CommCare-Based Infectious Disease Programs
EGPAF - Client Tracking Application for HIV & TB Patients
Lesotho
EGPAF used CommCare for TB/HIV/ANC patient tracking, monitoring treatment attendance and identifying defaulters.
CDC - Infomovel HIV/TB Patient Case Management
Mozambique
A CommCare-based app registers, follows up on, tracks, and records testing of Index HIV+ patients and their direct families in Mozambique.
CARE - CHAMP HIV Program with Key Populations
Cameroon
In five drop-in centers in Cameroon, workers use CommCare to track HIV tests, monitor rates of seroconversion, and study adherence rates to antiretroviral therapy (ART).
EGPAF - Client Tracking Application for HIV & TB Patients
Lesotho
The Client Tracking Application was developed in partnership with EGPAF. It is used to Track Clinic Appointments, send SMS reminders for patients, and facilitate Patient Tracing (HIV, TB) to reduce the number of missed appointments, defaulting, and LTFU patients in TB/HIV/ANC visits. The app is currently deployed in eight districts. Dimagi is now partnering with the Baylor College of Medicine Children's Foundation Lesotho to deploy the app to the two final districts in Lesotho – bringing the app to national scale.
CDC - Infomovel HIV/TB Patient Case Management
Mozambique
In 2015, Dimagi and CDC, along with 5 clinical partners (FGH, Ariel, EGPAF, CCS, ICAP) initiated an innovative mHealth project in Mozambique based on a mobile application that would help register, follow up on, track, and record testing of Index HIV+ patients and their direct families.
The project implements a standardized application (Infomovel) in-country. It aims to both improve adherence to HIV treatment and to identify new HIV+ patients through community testing. In the next phase (Oct. 2018 - Sept. 2019), all clinical partners will be part of a single domain that will facilitate data visibility across partners, workflow standardization, programmatic coverage and entire system interoperability with OpenMRS.
The Infomovel project has 3 main components:
- Community testing for HIV and TB through an index patient.
- HIV adherence support through routine community visits and consultations at the health facilities.
- Retrieval of patients lost to follow up through community visits and counseling.
CARE - CHAMP HIV Program with Key Populations
Cameroon
Dimagi’s collaboration with CARE Cameroon’s project CHAMP began in May 2015. Since then, Dimagi developed and deployed two CommCare applications to track key populations from the community level throughout the continuum of care, including HIV testing, monitoring rates of seroconversion, and studying adherence rates to antiretroviral therapy (ART) in five drop-in-centers across three cities in Cameroon. Dimagi also worked closely with the CHAMP team to build internal capacity for the independent management of the mHealth intervention. The application has about 380 active users currently.
The Latest on Mobile Data Collection in Infectious Disease Programs
Updates and advice from our world-class partners and Global Services team
Leveraging Mobile Data Collection in the Fight Against HIV/AIDS
A Peace Corps volunteer explains how CommCare aided in a patient data collection program in Cameroon focused on HIV treatment around World AIDS Day.
How Dimagi is Helping to Eliminate Malaria
At Dimagi, we are proudly using our expertise and resources to work alongside many organizations in the fight against malaria, taking a number of different approaches to tackle the disease.
Lessons from Contact Tracing During the Ebola Outbreak
Three pieces of advice in project and app design from a member of our Global Services team who spent a year working in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea on mobile tech to combat Ebola.
Learn more about CommCare
Learn how the world’s most powerful mobile data collection platform can help your program
More than 2000 projects across 80 countries rely on CommCare for their mobile data collection and reporting needs.
“If you can’t conduct effective contact tracing, you can’t control
the spread of the disease. CommCare improved the Government of
Guinea’s ability to identify, track, and monitor people at risk
for Ebola in real-time, provided access to epidemiological data
from difficult-to-reach communities, and allowed for stronger
accountability of surveillance processes – ultimately helping
us to keep up with a fast-spreading and dangerous epidemic.”
- Anne Liu, Director for Health Systems Development, Earth Institute
“A phone with CommCare provides considerable time saving. I am
currently tracing 18 contacts, and I could save them easily with
the application... Using phones is more convenient for us as young people.”
- Alpha Sow Midiaou, Contact Tracer, Conakry, Guinea
“Thank you for helping us to gather data, refine programming,
and spread the message about our impact in fighting global
climate change and extreme poverty.”
- Sarah Baird, Executive Director, Let There Be Light International