This week’s Digital Health News come from Makerere University where researchers developed an innovation to help in the fight against COVID-19. In a move to increase Digital health coverage in Uganda, researchers from Makerere University have designed an innovation for covid19. The COVID-19 Mobile Contact Tracing App digitizes the investigation, management, and contact tracing for COVID-19 in communities.
Dr. Harriet Babikako, the Project lead said that their inspiration came from the need to speed up the process of contact tracing, data collection and improve the quality of data collected.
“Currently, Community surveillance teams have to trek distances for hours to go and find information from suspected or even confirmed cases. Therefore, challenges such as incomplete identification of contacts, delays in communication, and response, loss of contact lists, inadequate data collection, and transcription errors exist, making the system slow, and inefficient. Thus, information exchange between involved parties is too slow and expensive. By the time a response is generated, the disease is spreading. This means the spreading of COVID-19 is not solved efficiently” she explained in a zoom session.
As a Covid19 symptom checker, users can screen themselves and then know whether they should seek medical care or not. The application also has other support services like COVID-19 Laboratories and hospitals all authorized by the Ministry of Health. One can also consult Private Doctors and Counsellors on the App through WhatsApp or other call options.
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From the application, one can also book a COVID-19 test from the nearest authorized laboratories. All you do is fill a lab booking form and the application will identify the nearest registered health facility.
Another way COVID-19 Mobile Contact Tracing App will be useful is in schools and universities as Mr. Gichuhi, the Co-Pi noted. “Now that schools are open, School nurses can use the application to carry out tests and refer students to the nearest laboratories. The application also gives the students their COVID-19 status and advises them on preventive methods like self-isolation.”
