This short case study illustrates how India successfully leveraged its existing digital data solutions as part of its COVID-19 vaccination response. It outlines the solutions used by the country and the resultant impact, benefits, challenges, and...

Malawi: Redcross in partnership with Katikati using 2-way SMS communication to address rumours, gather insight and support communities

Short message service (SMS) reminders coupled with a small monetary incentive conditioned on prompt vaccination have been shown to improve first-dose measles-containing vaccine (MCV1) uptake. We assessed whether SMS reminders and unconditional...

As health experts, governments, and policymakers around the world harmonize their goals to improve health outcomes through the use of better data and digital tools, the importance of partnerships with key technology stakeholders has become...

BACKGROUND: Reminder/recall systems are effective ways to improve immunization rates, but their feasibility in primary health care (PHC) settings in Nigeria has not been adequately evaluated. In this study we describe the acceptability and...

Vaccination reminders must both inform and persuade, and text messages designed for this purpose must do so in 160 characters or less. We tested a strategy for improving the impact of HPV vaccination text message reminders through strategic wording....

Routine childhood immunisation is one of the most successful and cost-effective public health interventions that have considerably reduced global child morbidity and mortality.1 However, annually, an estimated 18·7 million children under 1 year...

The Global Polio Eradication Initiative, established in 1988, has led to the immunization of 2.5 billion children against the disease. In 2014, only 359 cases of poliomyelitis (polio) were reported worldwide, which is a fraction of the estimated 350...

BACKGROUND: As mobile phone access continues to expand globally, opportunities exist to leverage these technologies to support demand for immunisation services and improve vaccine coverage. We aimed to assess whether short message service (SMS)...

Despite its promise, however, the digital health landscape today is highly fragmented. The result is a myriad of digital health projects and applications that rarely reach scale and if they were to expand could even strain the health system. An...

The Canadian National Vaccine Safety network (CANVAS) gathers and analyzes safety data on individuals receiving the influenza vaccine during the early stages of annual influenza vaccination campaigns with data collected via participant surveys...

INTRODUCTION On-going post-licensure surveillance of adverse events following immunisation (AEFI) is critical to detecting and responding to potentially serious adverse events in a timely manner. SmartVax is a vaccine safety monitoring tool that...

Mobile applications have the potential to influence vaccination behavior, including on-time vaccination. We sought to determine whether the use of a mobile immunization app was associated with the likelihood of reporting on-time vaccination in a...

BACKGROUND Two-dimensional (2D) barcoding has the potential to enhance documentation of vaccine encounters at the point of care. However, this is currently limited to environments equipped with dedicated barcode scanners and compatible record...

BACKGROUND Recent studies have revealed a low measles vaccination (MV) rate in the Republic of Guinea-Bissau (West Africa) that has not increased in accordance with the increasing coverage of other vaccinations. Measles is the deadliest of all...

Introduction Influenza presents additional burdens for children with chronic respiratory conditions. Influenza vaccinations may reduce complications, yet approximately half of children remain unprotected. Evidence supports integration of text and...

BACKGROUND The aim of this study was to assess the effectiveness of an EPI smartphone application (EPI app) on improving vaccination coverage in rural Sichuan Province, China. METHODS This matched-pair cluster randomized controlled study included 32...

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the effectiveness and cost of bidirectional short messaging service in increasing rates of vaccination and well child care (WCC) among adolescents. METHODS: We included all adolescents needing a recommended adolescent...

In 2012, the Global Vaccine Action Plan* established a goal to achieve measles and rubella elimination in five of the six World Health Organization (WHO) regions (194 countries) by 2020 (1). Measles elimination strategies aim to achieve ≥95%...

BACKGROUND Hepatitis B vaccine birth dose (HepB-BD) was introduced in Lao People\'s Democratic Republic to prevent perinatal hepatitis B virus transmission in 2008; high coverage is challenging since only 38% of births occur in a health facility....

A comparative descriptive study was conducted to determine the effectiveness of text messages with pictures compared with plain text messages or verbal reminders in improving measles, mumps, and rubella immunization compliance in the rural areas of...

Background: Two-dimensional (2D) barcoding has the potential to enhance documentation of vaccine encounters at the point of care. However, this is currently limited to environments equipped with dedicated barcode scanners and compatible record...

Health facility stock-outs of life saving malaria medicines are common across Africa. Innovative ways of addressing this problem are urgently required. We evaluated whether SMS based reporting of stocks of artemether-lumefantrine (AL) and rapid...

During May 23, 2014–January 10, 2015, Sierra Leone reported 7,777 confirmed cases of Ebola virus disease (Ebola) (1). In response to the epidemic, on August 5, Sierra Leone\'s Emergency Operations Center established a toll-free, nationwide Ebola...

Immunization coverage of vulnerable children is often sub-optimal in many low- and middle-income countries. The use of a reminder/recall (R/R) system has been one of the strategies shown to be effective in improving immunization rates. In the resent...

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Vietnam is a country with a high immunization coverage rate of 95%, using the diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DTP3) vaccine as a key indicator of national immunization program performance. However, the Vietnamese health...

INTRODUCTION: Maternal and neonatal mortality remains high in many low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). Availability and use of mobile phones is increasing rapidly with 90% of persons in developing countries having a mobile-cellular...

Medical countermeasures (MCMs) are medical products used during public health emergencies. This study, conducted within the Mini-Sentinel Initiative, sought to develop the patient identification and matching processes necessary to assess safety...

Many health care workers lack access to clinical support tools in rural and resource-limited settings. To address this gap, the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Clinical Guidelines manual was converted into a static mobile health reference...

BACKGROUND: Over 20 000 people die from rabies each year in India. At least 95 % of people contract rabies from an infected dog. Annual vaccination of over 70 % of the dog population has eliminated both canine and human rabies in many countries....

In Bangladesh, full vaccination rates among children living in rural hard-to-reach areas and urban streets are low. We conducted a quasi-experimental pre-post study of a 12-month mobile phone intervention to improve vaccination among 0-11 months old...

Immunization registries or information systems are critical to improving the quality and evaluating the ongoing success of immunization programs. However, the completeness of these systems is challenged by a myriad of factors including the...

The impact of a Computerized Immunization Register (CIR) on Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI) with sending SMS to parents before immunization sessions has never been studied in sub-Saharan Africa. The objective of this study is to measure EPI...

Mobile technology and applications (apps) have disrupted several industries including healthcare. The advantage of apps, being personally focused and permitting bidirectional communication, make them well suited to address many immunization...

BACKGROUND: Entering data onto paper-based forms, then digitizing them, is a traditional data-management method that might result in poor data quality, especially when the secondary data are incomplete, illegible, or missing. Transcription errors...

Immunization saves millions of lives against vaccine-preventable diseases. Yet, 24 million children born every year do not receive proper immunization during their first year. UNICEF and WHO have emphasized the need to strengthen the immunization...

Mobile health (mHealth) technologies have been implemented in many low- and middle-income countries to address challenges in maternal and child health. Many of these technologies attempt to influence patients\', caretakers\', or health workers\'...

OBJECTIVE: Measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccination is important for preventing disease outbreaks, yet pockets of under-vaccination persist. Text message reminders have been employed successfully for other pediatric vaccines, but studies examining...

Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness and cost of bidirectional short messaging service in increasing rates of vaccination and well child care (WCC) among adolescents. METHODS: We included all adolescents needing a recommended adolescent...

Most underdeveloped countries do not meet core disease outbreak surveillance because of the lack of human resources, laboratory and infrastructural facilities. The use of cell phone technology for disease outbreak syndromic surveillance is a new...

Use of mobile information technology may aid collection of real-time, standardised data to inform and improve decision-making for polio programming and response. The researchers utilised Android-based smartphones to collect data electronically from...

Giving cell phones to pregnant women and generally improving services could increase their utilization of the primary healthcare system.

An overview of Vodafone technologies\' use throughout several countries in mobile health projects.

Sub-optimal vaccination coverage and recent outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases serve as a reminder that vaccine hesitancy remains a concern. ImmunizeCA- a new smartphone app to help track immunizations- may address several reasons for not...

BACKGROUND: There is no functional pharmacovigilance system in Cambodia to our knowledge. Mobile phone-based tools- such as short message service (SMS) text messages- are increasingly used for surveillance purposes. OBJECTIVE: To pilot-test the...

RATIONALE: Noncompliance with vaccination schedules undermines the potential benefits of immunization. The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether a reminder of the next vaccine dose sent by the Short Messaging Service (SMS) to the vaccinee's...

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BACKGROUND: Access to mobile phone technology has rapidly expanded in developing countries. In Africa- mHealth is a relatively new concept and questions arise regarding reliability of the technology used for health outcomes. This review documents...

OBJECTIVES: To evaluate whether automated reminders increase on-time completion of the three-dose human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine series. METHODS: Ten reproductive health centers enrolled 365 women aged 19-26 to receive dose one of the HPV...

Vaccine-preventable deaths account for an estimated 17% of the 8.8 million deaths worldwide each year in children under five years of age (1). In Pakistan, despite major efforts to improve immunization coverage through the Expanded Programme on...