Use of a health worker-targeted smartphone app to support quality malaria RDT implementation in Busia County, Kenya: A feasibility and acceptability study
Introduction: In partnership with two global health nonprofits, Population Services International (PSI) and Population Services Kenya (PS Kenya), Audere implemented a pilot study to evaluate the feasibility, acceptability, and effectiveness of the app in community clinics and the private sector. While a study evaluating the effectiveness of the app is presented elsewhere, this paper aims to understand the feasibility of HealthPulse implementation among health workers in a low-resource setting. Additionally, this paper focuses on analyzing the acceptability of the app among health workers, investigating whether the app can be easily integrated into health workers’ standard workflow and understanding how it was perceived as a mRDT testing support tool. Results from this study will be used to guide additional development and utilization of the HealthPulse app throughout Kenya and other high burden geographies.
Conclusions: HealthPulse was designed as a supportive tool for mRDT testing, and these results highlight its potential for integrating the tool into health workers’ everyday use. mRDT implementation knowledge among health workers generally improved, but was not perfected post-intervention, and results indicated areas for app improvement. HealthPulse users in the study indicated strong support for future use and scale-up of this intervention, with support from both the community level and the private sector. Overall, these results demonstrate that an app to support health workers in low- and middle-income countries such as Kenya is a workable, acceptable, and feasible model with potential for scale up as a supportive supervision, interpretation, and/or surveillance tool.
Read window compliance: Time from the activation of the HealthPulse timer to the mRDT being photographed, by type of healthworker
