Community Health Work and Diagnostic Mobile Software in Mobile Communities Field Notes from Kono, Sierra Leone

Abstract

I visited Wellbody with a team of four other undergraduate students to pilot a program that would train local Community Health Workers (CHWs) on diagnosing patients with the aid of smart phone technology. Employing CHWs not only creates jobs locally, but also helps ensure the sustainability of the project by helping locals help themselves. Our goal was threepronged: (1) To keep a comprehensive health record and history of all inhabitants in the rural communities; (2) To screen for sick patients during home visits and to provide triage or one free referral to the clinic; (3) To follow-up on HIV, TB or malaria treatment management and side effects, as well as provide pre- and post-natal screenings. Additionally we would be providing standardization and accountability in the screening and follow-up process for CHWs when they did house visits. We used Sana, an open-source Android-based medical diagnostic and documentation platform, to design a smart phone logic that would be able to distill a diagnosis from a list of symptoms, thus emulating a doctor’s decision-making process.