AED's Satellife Projects - Botswana

"AED-SATELLIFE has implemented projects using handheld computers and other mobile computing devices for health data collection, clinical and public health information dissemination, disease surveillance, and continuing medical education."

Handheld Computers Save Time and Resources,
Improve Data Collection for HIV Voluntary Counseling and Testing Programs

AED-SATELLIFE is working with Tebelopele, a local non-profit organization in Botswana, to improve its data collection and reporting capacity for its voluntary testing and counseling programs and for the "Door-to-Door" campaign funded by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), an agency of the United States government. Client intake forms are now completed directly on handheld computers (sometimes called personal digital assistants or PDAs) and the collected data is automatically uploaded daily to program databases, eliminating
errors and delays in data collection and reporting.

"Handheld computers have been in use, on a pilot basis, in Tebelopele for two months and early indications are that they have improved the quality of data and efficiency of operation. Full roll out across the organisation has begun and will be completed in the next month."
Jan Raats, Executive Director, Tebelopele
October 2007

In addition to collecting household and individual information on the handhelds in the "Door to Door"campaign, outreach workers are employing the Global Positioning System (GPS) to record the coordinates of each house they visit so that they can be mapped for future reference. Workers are also using portable barcode scanners in combination with the handheld computers to ensure that lab
results are accurately matched to households and individuals.

Because Tebelopele tests over 100,000 people a year, it has the largest data set available in Botswana to track both the epidemic and the outreach efforts to prevent new cases. When dealing with public health, greater data accuracy and faster reporting are important. With AED-SATELLIFE's assistance, the quality of
that data will be greatly improved.

For more information on using handheld computers and mobile devices, please contact us at PDAprojects@healthnet.org

This particular Satellife project helps collect data on HIV cases in Botswana. This is just one example of the Satellife projects, which use handheld computers to help carry out and document relief programs and their outcomes. As the info piece explains, data is collected and uploaded automatically to databases,and houses' coordinates are mapped, in order to ease the future management of the HIV testing and counseling program.