Satellife PDA Project - Ghana Uganda and Kenya

The project uses affordable technologies to link health professionals in developing countries to each other and to reliable sources of information, including modem-to-modem telephone links and the Internet by using geostationary satellites.

The organisers believe Information and communications technology (ICT) can play an important role in combating disease and improving healthcare. The project used ICT as a tool to collect community health information to support decision-making; improving doctors' access to current medical information; linking healthcare professionals so they could share information and knowledge; and enhancing health administration, remote diagnostics, and distribution of medical supplies.

The project-explored questions related to the selection and design of appropriate, affordable technology and locally relevant content for use in African healthcare environment, specifically targeted at assessing the usefulness of the PDA for data collection and information dissemination. Physicians, medical officers, and medical students tested the PDA in the context of their daily work environments in order to gain a perspective on the real issues that affect the adoption of technology.

The PDA used was the Handspring Visor Neo, with a 33 MHz DragonBall VZ microprocessor from Motorola, a Palm operating system (Palm OS), and 8 MB of main memory. Pendragon Forms v3.1 was the software programme used to create the survey forms. Country-specific drug lists and treatment guidelines were obtained by Satellife in hard copy or electronic formats and adapted to a PDA-accessible format. Medical texts were obtained from Skyscape.

The Project was conducted in three phases. Satellife first put the handheld computers to use for field surveys, by linking this project to a widespread measles immunisation campaign being conducted in Ghana by the American Red Cross (ARC) in December 2001. The Satellife-Arc joint effort used 30 PDAs in a short-term survey intended to determine the efficacy of the measles immunisation campaign outreach efforts and collect some baseline health information. The Uganda phase tested the use and usefulness of 40 PDAs by medical practitioners to conduct an epidemiological survey on malaria, and to access and use medical reference tools and texts. The Kenya phase tested the use and usefulness of 40 PDAs by students to collect field survey information, and to access and use medical reference tools and texts as part of their studies.

Technology

The project was inspired and led by Satellife, a non-profit organisation based in Massachusetts, USA. The project's mission is to improve health through the use of ICT. It promotes the use of affordable technologies to link health professionals in developing countries to each other and to reliable sources of information.