Abstract
The tuberculosis (TB) continues to be a major public health burden in India as the number of new cases still is in ascending trend. The major challenges lie in adherence of treatment of identified cases which involve treating them by ensuring the patient is completing full course of treatment with proper medication. Deviation from proper medication might lead to drug-resistant TB which will be even more complicated to get treated. World Health Organization recommends Directly Observed Therapy (DOT) as a measure for TB control strategy but challenge lies in patient visiting to health clinics regularly for treatment supervision. Alternate choice could be community-based DOT (CB-DOT) since they are acceptable and accessible to the patient. The proposed mobile health (mHealth)-based solution to support TB programme objectives is a smartphone-based application framework named TB track. The smartphone app is used by patients as well as DOTS provider that helps in adhering to proper medication. This is achieved by proper monitoring of patients medicine intake, educating, and motivating them during different phases of treatment through TB track smart app. The app also helps the patients in reporting symptoms during the phase of treatment. TB track app has a novel QR code based technique for remote monitoring the patient–DOTS provider interaction. The mobile apps are designed to address common people with mobile human–computer interaction (HCI) in mind. All the data collected from patient interaction with smart app such as their regular medicine intake and symptoms occurring during phase of treatment are saved in storage environment in web which can be used for data analytics.
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Acknowledgements
Pilot testing of the TB track app framework was done in SRM University Medical Hospital located in Kattankulathur, Chennai with the support of school of public health department at SRM University Medical College. The app was also tested with eight patients in Thrissur District TB Hospital, Kerala. We thank Mr. Tom Thomas Founder Chairman Olive Touch Healthcare Services Limited & Mutual Assistance Resource Group (MARG) P.O., Ayyanthole, Near State Bank of Travancore, Ayyanthole Thrissur, Kerala 680003—India for providing support.
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Navin, K., Vadivu, G., Maharaj, A., Thomas, T., Lavanya, S. (2018). A Mobile Health Intervention to Support TB Eradication Programme for Adherence to Treatment and a Novel QR Code Based Technique to Monitor Patient–DOTS Provider Interaction. In: Bhattacharyya, S., Gandhi, T., Sharma, K., Dutta, P. (eds) Advanced Computational and Communication Paradigms. Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering, vol 475. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-8240-5_5
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