Health IT
Solar and ICT in rural uganda
Hi,
To follow up on the discussions from last fall about mobile phones and solar, I wanted to share this blog post. It's written by a phD candidate working in rural Uganda both looking at what types of ICT make the most sense for the various programs, given their capabilities and needs, and also testing different solutions to areas without consistent access to power. Has some interesting information and also lists a few products that she's testing.
http://ictdchick.com/blog/2009/12/16/bringing-icts-and-solar-to-rural-uganda/
She's attempting to calculate the value of different solutions and compare it to the cost. In my own research, I've found this to be a pretty difficult analysis, since so many of the variables (such as time saved, patient outcomes affected) require data prior to system implementation, and they often don't exist (some of it, such as time, is never collected). Without these variables, I'm not sure we'll ever really be able to adequately compare ICT implementations and move towards a normative understanding of models and strategies.
If any of you have thoughts on "invisible costs"--for example, uncompensated time spent calculating monthly totals from a ledger, work satisfaction, I'd be really interested to get your thoughts on that, as well as the information presented in this blog post.
Joaquin Blaya, PhD
Hi Maria,
expand commentI'm attaching here a brief set of notes about a cost-effectiveness analysis for a laboratory information system called e-Chasqui (http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6947/7/33) that we implemented. They describe the administrative benefits that we thought just a system could have. I've also put as a resource the full set of notes which also delineated clinical benefits as well as papers that were published in this space (though they were all done in developing countries).
Administrative Benefits
Possible cost benefits of e-Chasqui
1. Savings on being able to perform operational research
a. Estimate amount of time required to gather data for different studies performed
2. Decreased number of duplicate tests performed
a. ~10% duplicates
3. Laboratory personnel time savings on monthly reports and data analysis by lab director
a. See notes at end of document
4. Reduction in quantity of phone calls from health centers calling lab to figure out status of test
5. Making and storing photocopies of all test results performed that do not have to be done anymore because are stored electronically
a. 3 cents per copy
b. Personnel time
6. Health center personnel time saved by using e-Chasqui
a. Time-motion study ...
3:27 PM, 12 Jan 2010 | Permalink