IntroductionTuberculosis (TB) is a notifiable disease and health care providers are required to notify every TB case to local authorities. We conducted a pilot study to determine the usefulness and feasibility of mobile interface in TB notification (MITUN) voice based system for notification of TB cases by private medical practitioners.MethodologyThe study was conducted during September 2013 to October 2014 in three zones of Chennai, an urban setting in South India. Private clinics wherein services are provided by single private medical practitioners were approached. The steps involved in MITUN included: Registration of the practitioners and notification of TB cases by them through voice interactions. Pre and post-intervention questionnaires were administered to collect information on TB notification practices and feasibility of MITUN after an implementation period of 6 months.ResultsA total of 266 private medical practitioners were approached for the study. Of them, 184 (69%) participated in the study; of whom 11 (6%) practitioners used MITUN for TB notification. Reasons for not using MITUN include lack of time, referral of patients to government facility, issues related to patient confidentiality and technical problems. Suggestions for making mobile phone based TB notification process user-friendly included reducing call duration, including only crucial questions and using missed call or SMS options.ConclusionThe performance (feasibility and usefulness) of MITUN voice based system for TB notification in the present format was sub-optimal. Perceived problems, logistical and practical issues preclude scale–up of notification of TB by private practitioners.
This paper describes the experiences gained in terms of challenges encountered and lessons learned in an exploratory initiative of mobile phone‐based multimedia agricultural advisory System (MAAS), which helps in providing timely agricultural expert advice to farmers on their mobile phone. When a farmer is calling, a call‐centre‐like interface containing personalized information of that farmer pops up at the expert's end. The expert views the farmer's dashboard and analyses the situation and query based advisory is provided to the farmer. This agricultural advisory system formed part of a research study under National Agricultural Innovation Projects (NAIP), New Delhi. The MAAS is developed by Indian Institute of Technology Madras's Rural Technology and Business Incubator and it was field tested with 1200 farmers in three districts of Tamil Nadu (Kancheepuram, Erode and Dharmapuri), India, during December 2010 to June 2012. The aim of this paper is to describe the experiences, highlighting a number of specific challenges and lessons associated with providing mobile based agricultural advisories to farmers in rural areas.
While Indian agriculture contributes merely 13.9% of the country's Gross Domestic Product, nearly 52% of the population still depends on agriculture for its livelihood. Close to half of the farmers are small farmers (owning 1.0 ha or less) facing near-stagnant productivity. This is due to several factors, but farmers often indicate that access to the right information at the right time is one of the most sought after need. Addressing this need to aid in the development of a productive and sustainable agricultural sector has certainly emerged as one of the major humanitarian challenges in India. There have been numerous efforts in this direction with the setting up of agricultural advisory systems, to provide information to farmers, but not many have succeeded in the objective of providing easily accessible, sustainable, personalized advisories to farmers. Recognizing this, the Indo-UK Advanced Technology Centre of Excellence in Next Generation Networks, Systems and Services (IUATC), a major technology transfer initiative, supported by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) in India and UK Government under the Digital Economy Theme is attempting to address the challenges in Indian agriculture through Information and Communication Technology (ICT) networks. This paper presents a functioning Agricultural Advisory System that has been built with the aim of bridging information gaps between farmers and agriculture knowledge workers (such as agricultural scientists and extension workers) and is an extension of a technology effort that has been previously presented. While our earlier work only discussed the potential of using an innovative ICT approach to providing personalized agricultural advisories, this paper covers details of the technology implementation, presents a brief summary of the impact analysis carried out with the farmers registered into our system and discusses new features that could make the system more effective.
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