Endline Study Of Digital Health Innovation For COVID-19 Response In India

Since the outbreak of the pandemic COVID-19, the most prominent challenge was access to the healthcare system and its functioning. To tackle this, countries started realizing the potential of digital innovations in providing healthcare services such as building platforms and applications not only for consultation or access to doctors but also for vaccination, mobile health apps, electronic health records, electronic medical records, wearable devices and telemedicine.

In line with this, Terre des hommes foundation implemented an intervention named “Digital Health Innovation for COVID-19 Response in India- Phase II” to mitigate the toll of the pandemic. They had developed two digital solutions under this project: the first is used for COVID-19 screening and triage purposes and the latter is used for healthcare worker training and monitoring application. The intervention benefitted 3.48 lakh people through 120 primary health centres and 160 health centre workers in four blocks (Ratu, Namkum, Angara and Kanke) of Ranchi in Jharkhand.

The comprehensive goal of this mixed-method cross-sectional end-line study was to capture all the intended and unintended consequences of the intervention such as the use of digital job aids among the health workers targeted under the intervention, adherence to the protocol for screening and triage and self-protection, improvement in knowledge, use of WhatsApp based chatbot for problem-solving, practice of health workers on identification, referral and follow-up of suspected and confirmed cases, the effectiveness of supportive supervision and response from the health administration and other factors which affects the quality of care.

The experience and satisfaction of the community were also considered. The findings from the study have helped to establish the relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, sustainability/ adaptability, challenges/ lessons learnt and good practices about the intervention.

The data collection for the end-line phase II study was completed in 7 days (6 June 2022 to 13 June 2022). Five enumerators and two supervisors were involved in the process of the data collection. Before the commencement of data collection, a one-day training (5 June, 2022) was conducted with the enumerators and the supervisor.

Endline Study Of Digital Health Innovation For COVID-19 Response In India - Phase II

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