A Mobile Application for Health Information Dissemination: a Namibian Context
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Date
2016
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
IEEE
Abstract
Mobile devices have become the most powerful tool to
disseminate information across communities in today’s world.
The current method of disseminating health-related information
to the communities in Namibia is a manual system which is not
efficient and effective. This study sought to identify an efficient
and effective way to disseminate health information. The first
phase of the study was qualitative, applying an interpretive
approach and a qualitative multi-case study research design.
Two hospitals, the Ministry of Health and Social Services
(MoHSS), the Centre for Disease Control (CDC) and members of
the community participated in this study. Face-to-face interviews,
focus group interviews, questionnaires and document sampling
were used as data collection methods to identify the requirements
for a mobile application. Through laboratory experimentation,
the second phase of the study led to the development of a
prototype mobile application that will enable anyone to install the
application on their phones in order to access general diseases
information from the CDC.The first phase of the research
concluded that a large number of Namibians own cellphones
hence a mobile application would suffice. The most prevalent
diseases from the research are malaria, diabetes, cancer and
HIV, hence the initial application should concentrate on
information dissemination for such. The mobile application
content covers the common diseases in Namibia, their definition,
the causes of the disease, the symptoms of the disease, how to
prevent the disease and whom to contact.In the research
conducted, the majority of the population is literate hence the
application can support text-based information in addition to
graphics. The research also found that a large number of people
visit clinics and hospitals hence the mobile application will
benefit both even those who visit clinics and hospitals as well
provided they have smartphone.
Description
Keywords
health information system, Information dissemination
Citation
Angula, N., & Dlodlo, N. (2016). A mobile application for health information dissemination: A Namibian context. In Advances in Computing and Communication Engineering (ICACCE), 2016 International Conference on, 461-466.