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      Feasibility and Effectiveness of Mobile App for Active Case Finding for Tuberculosis in India

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          Abstract

          Background

          Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease with 2.8 million cases and 480,000 deaths each year in India. The city of Indore alone with a population of 3.5 million had 7,839 identified TB cases in 2017. However, about two to three thousand additional cases remain unidentified per district officials. The unidentified cases lead to an endemic TB and hamper the efforts of organizations such as The Collaborative to Eliminate TB from India (CETI) to reduce the incidence of TB with the method of Active Case Finding (ACF). 1 Previously, 1,332 mobile apps attempted to use technology to overcome the challenge of unreported TB patients in Indian slum areas due to the inaccurate, lost, or unhelpful data collected in ACF; yet the existing apps for TB prevention and treatment possessed minimal functionality. Over a period of 3 months, the CETI developed a mobile data collection app to generate a TB diagnostic survey and to collect data from patient registration form.

          Methods

          To study the feasibility and effectiveness of the app, a pilot survey was conducted of 163,496 homes covering a population of 828,020 in the slum areas of Indore and Bhopal.

          Findings

          Between the years of 2018 and 2019, 14,349 pulmonary suspected cases and 4,357 extra pulmonary suspected cases of TB were identified. Among the total of 18,706 cases identified, 7,756 patients (48.1%) had low-grade fever for over 2 weeks, 6,331 patients (39.2%) had persistent cough for more than 2 weeks, 7,693 patients (47.7%) had weight loss, and 251 patients (1.6%) had cough with blood.

          Interpretation

          This pilot experience shows that an app is a useful tool for TB case recording and follow-up in the field. Further training of the health workers, and more widespread availability and ease of use of mobile phones will be necessary.

          Funding

          unidentified.

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          Most cited references1

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          Smartphone applications to support tuberculosis prevention and treatment: Review and evaluation [Internet]

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            Author and article information

            Journal
            TMT
            Telehealth and Medicine Today
            Partners in Digital Health
            2471-6960
            05 July 2020
            2020
            : 5
            : 10.30953/tmt.v5.177
            Affiliations
            [1 ]Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA, USA
            [2 ]Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA, USA
            [3 ]TSU Quillen College of Medicine, Mountain Home, TN, USA
            [4 ]Collaborative to Eliminate Tuberculosis in India (CETI), Indore, India
            [5 ]EC Digital Services, India
            [6 ]MGM Medical College, Indore, India
            [7 ]Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Labs (CSAIL), Institute of Medical Engineering and Science (IMES)
            [8 ]Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA
            [9 ]Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA
            Author notes
            Corresponding Author: Weijia Zhang, Email: wzhang0333@ 123456gmail.com
            Article
            177
            10.30953/tmt.v5.177
            f5738ac8-5b01-4469-9334-ad62255e4e67
            © 2020 Weijia Zhang

            This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, adapt, enhance this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial.

            History
            Categories
            Original Research

            Social & Information networks,General medicine,General life sciences,Health & Social care,Public health,Hardware architecture
            Active Case Finding,Tuberculosis,Telemedicine

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