Description
Community HealthWorkers (CHWs) perform home visits for rural populations, provide basic healthcare, educate the population on disease prevention, refer patients to infacility treatment, and have the potential to capture vital data for predicting and preventing disease. These programs capture important information for research and monitoring, but face challenges in using the information to improve service delivery. We propose an information system for CHWs that not only captures but operationalizes data with a careful composition of technologies, including data visualization and delay tolerant networking. CommScape, an application for mobile phones, allows CHWs to capture, visualize and share key information like personal medical histories and trends and alerts. We posit that CommScape can improve CHWs' quality of care, ability to predict and prevent diseases, and allow for better allocation of health resources.