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Re: [Health-dev] Who wants to help on the development of automatic data


From: Marc Murray
Subject: Re: [Health-dev] Who wants to help on the development of automatic data input of health surveillance?
Date: Sun, 06 Dec 2015 08:40:29 -0500

On Wed, 2015-12-02 at 21:25 -0200, Roberto Novaes wrote:
Hello to all! I have sent a similar message to health list but with a different purpose. Only the same paragraph is the same.
GNU Health has modules dedicated to the monitoring of neglected tropical diseases (dengue and chagas so far).  We are working here Brazil to automate the process of data input into the system. Instead of using the desktop interface, we are studying the following possibilities: use a super simple tablet or a paper form that will be scanned. Those solutions would be used on the field by the health workers. Our first area of work would be to register dengue related information, which is, together with chicungunya and zika, major health issues in Brazil caused by Aedes Aegypt.


We are thinking of two alternatives: 


1) Use a super simple tablet, that would display a list of places to visit (like the Domiciliary Units). The user would, then, open a form to input the data colected regarding that place. This data would later be exported to a csv file to be imported into GNU Health.We are studying android development with SQLite to do that.

Maybe I'm biased because I don't know Android development, but I think a web application may be more accessible than an Android app.

I'm thinking that you could get away with using HTML5 and localstorage for offline access. The synchronisation would then take place when the device goes back online. Except, it would be through the same web-app instead of CSV.

To do this you could use flask-tryton [1] and you would need some _javascript_ goodies to handle the localstorage part.

And then there's this library I've heard of, but haven't used, called wq [2] that seems to be designed for this kind of thing - through the web.

2) Use a paper form that could be scanned and the data collected would be also imported directly into GNU Health. We are studying sdpas to do that --> http://sdaps.org/SDAPS

If you (we) can pull off the web based interface as above, then we could also provide some kind of web-service interface that will allow the OCR and other machines to be able to submit data - without understanding Tryton.

GNU Health would have to make the process of generating the places to visit on a day to each health worker automatic.
a report?


What do you think? Please help and criticize.

I love it. And we will need something like this in Jamaica soon. We are currently at the specification stage where the Environmental Health experts are reviewing their paper forms.

A similar setup could also be used for collecting other field data: e.g. restaurants, hotels, barber-shops and so on.
Of course, if further explanations are needed, I would be glad to do so.


I have a couple of questions about your intentions:

What would the field officer do if a location not mentioned on her "visit sheet" is discovered?
How will you handle authentication and accountability? Will the field officers be regular users in/of GNUHealth?
Do timestamps matter for the data being collected?
Will the field data contain personally identifiable information (name of contact person/proprietor doesn't count)?

Thanks in advance,

And thanks for starting this discussion.

Roberto Novaes
Sílex Sistemas
www.silexsistemas.com.br

Marc Murray
Ministry of Health, Jamaica
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