Nigeria used mobile technology to swiftly respond to the recent Ebola outbreak that threatened to ravage the country. The virus was contained through a partnership with eHealth & Information Systems Nigeria who developed an application that helped medical workers in the field track the patients.
The application was developed on the Android platform, with several targets in mind. It has to be easy to use, has to make data entry easy, has to be connected wirelessly, and must be able to submit data based on the phones whereabouts automatically. With all this in mind an application was built.
The eHealth & Information Systems team then quickly got the application out, and started putting phones in the hands of the medical workers so that tracking could start.
With the application, the workers were inputting the information of all the possible patients they were visiting and submitting to a central database where all the information on the Ebola patients is stored, along with geological information from the workers’ actual point of input.
I will digress that the Nigerians were lucky enough to know who patient 0 was and could trace hours steps and possible interactions, but even if it wasn’t known, the means to start the tracking were still there. When asked about the actual numbers on the time the application had saved, the eHealth & Information Systems team stated that it reduced the reporting times from around 12 hours, to 6 hours initially, and then to 3 hours, and is currently being used in a real-time fashion.
All the information that previously had to be hand written and entered into a database is now done directly from the application. It is then analysed and used to combat and reduce the deadly breakout. The key here is readiness, and being willing to think outside the box. Even though it is a retroactive solution, it was the quickest one to date.