PurposePhysicians who are primary care providers in rural communities form an essential stakeholder group in rural mobile health (mHealth) delivery. This study was exploratory in nature and was conducted in Udupi district of Karnataka, India. The purpose of this study is to examine the perceptions of rural medical officers (MOs) (rural physicians) regarding the benefits and challenges of mobile phone use by community health workers (CHWs).Design/methodology/approachIn-depth interviews were conducted among 15 MOs belonging to different primary health centers of the district. Only MOs with a minimum five years of experience were recruited in the study using purposive and snowball sampling. This was followed by thematic analysis of the data collected.FindingsThe perceptions of MOs regarding the CHWs' use of mobile phones were largely positive. However, they reported the existence of some challenges that limits the potential of its full use. The findings were categorized under four themes namely, benefits of mobile phone use to CHWs, benefits of mobile phone-equipped CHWs, current mobile phone use by CHWs and barriers to CHWs' mobile phone use. The significant barriers reported in the CHWs' mobile phone use were poor mobile network coverage, technical illiteracy, lack of consistent technical training and call and data expense of the CHWs. The participants recommend an increased number of mobile towers, frequent training in mobile phone use and basic English language for the CHWs as possible solutions to the barriers.Originality/valueStudies examining the perceptions of doctors who are a primary stakeholder group in mHealth as well as in the public health system scenario are limited. To the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first studies to examine the perception of rural doctors regarding CHWs' mobile phone use for work in India.
A 2014 survey by Ipsos report that India accounts for the highest among 24 countries, in the number of child cyber bullying cases (32%) compared to the U.S (15%) or Great Britain (11%). About 70 percent of Indian tweens & teens, spend over five hours on the Internet in a normal week, out of which 27% kids use smartphones, says a McAfee Intel survey report.Popular among them are Social Networking Sites such as Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Vine, Pinterest, Tumblr, including Tinder (a dating app meant for adults)Earlier the access to the internet and the social networking sites for these children used to be from home through desktops but with IPad, IPod, Tablets, and mobiles, the whole problem take a deeper significant turn. This paper is based on a study which attempts to check on how much of cyber bullying exists in the Chennai scenario and how much of cyberbullying happen through mobile phones. The study also attempts to find out the most prevalent form of cyberbullying among these children and the reasons why these kids either become a victim or bully in the cyberspace.
mHealth now, more than ever, need to be integrated with existing health systems to further contactless healthcare and health delivery solutions. Studies have reported that mHealth can ensure enhanced health outcomes, ample patient care and offer quality support for professional health workers. Several studies have examined the potential of mHealth from various stakeholder perspectives. However, a serious dearth of studies exists that examine the advantages and challenges of using this technology from mHealth users‘ perspective especially in the rural context. This study examines the use of mobile phones for health-related purposes from the perspective of rural people belonging to the South Indian state of Karnataka. The focus is on their use of mobile phone to seek medical assistance, health information and services. The study also seeks to understand the barriers and challenges faced by the rural folk in accessing health related services, information and assistance through mobile phones. A qualitative research approach using in-depth interviews as data collection tool, was applied. Mobile phones are reported as useful by the rural mobile phone users for receiving health-related messages as well as for accessing help during emergency health conditions. However, to enable equity of use of this technology in the rural scenario and also for the government to use this technology for providing responses during public health emergencies such as COVID-19, challenges such as the existing mobile phone infrastructure, digital illiteracy and perceived health concerns of mobile phone use among rural folk need to be addressed.
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