| Title |
Experience of using mHealth to link village doctors with physicians: lessons from Chakaria, Bangladesh
|
|---|---|
| Published in |
BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making, August 2015
|
| DOI | 10.1186/s12911-015-0188-9 |
| Pubmed ID | |
| Authors |
Nazib Uz Zaman Khan, Sabrina Rasheed, Tamanna Sharmin, Tanvir Ahmed, Shehrin Shaila Mahmood, Fatema Khatun, SMA Hanifi, Shahidul Hoque, Mohammad Iqbal, Abbas Bhuiya |
| Abstract |
Bangladesh is facing serious shortage of trained health professionals. In the pluralistic healthcare system of Bangladesh, formal health care providers constitute only 5 % of the total workforce; the rest are informal health care providers. Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) are increasingly seen as a powerful tool for linking the community with formal healthcare providers. Our study assesses an intervention that linked village doctors (a cadre of informal health care providers practising modern medicine) to formal doctors through call centres from the perspective of the village doctors who participated in the intervention. The study was conducted in Chakaria, a remote rural area in south-eastern Bangladesh during April-May 2013. Twelve village doctors were selected purposively from a pool of 55 village doctors who participated in the mobile health (mHealth) intervention. In depth interviews were conducted to collect data. The data were manually analysed using themes that emerged. The village doctors talked about both business benefits (access to formal doctors, getting support for decision making, and being entitled to call trained doctors) and personal benefits (both financial and non-financial). Some of the major barriers mentioned were technical problems related to accessing the call centre, charging consultation fees, and unfamiliarity with the call centre physicians. Village doctors saw many benefits to having a business relationship with the trained doctors that the mHealth intervention provided. mHealth through call centres has the potential to ensure consultation services to populations through existing informal healthcare providers in settings with a shortage of qualified healthcare providers. |
X Demographics
The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 2 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| United States | 1 | 50% |
| India | 1 | 50% |
Demographic breakdown
| Type | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Scientists | 1 | 50% |
| Practitioners (doctors, other healthcare professionals) | 1 | 50% |
Mendeley readers
The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 149 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom | 1 | <1% |
| Bangladesh | 1 | <1% |
| Unknown | 147 | 99% |
Demographic breakdown
| Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Student > Master | 32 | 21% |
| Researcher | 21 | 14% |
| Student > Ph. D. Student | 14 | 9% |
| Student > Doctoral Student | 12 | 8% |
| Student > Bachelor | 7 | 5% |
| Other | 31 | 21% |
| Unknown | 32 | 21% |
| Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Medicine and Dentistry | 38 | 26% |
| Nursing and Health Professions | 19 | 13% |
| Social Sciences | 17 | 11% |
| Business, Management and Accounting | 9 | 6% |
| Computer Science | 8 | 5% |
| Other | 17 | 11% |
| Unknown | 41 | 28% |
Attention Score in Context
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 2. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 12 August 2015.
All research outputs
#15,160,034
of 23,316,003 outputs
Outputs from BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making
#1,255
of 2,024 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#146,814
of 265,211 outputs
Outputs of similar age from BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making
#24
of 34 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 23,316,003 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 32nd percentile – i.e., 32% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 2,024 research outputs from this source. They receive a mean Attention Score of 4.9. This one is in the 34th percentile – i.e., 34% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 34 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 32nd percentile – i.e., 32% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.