Electronic diagnostic tests, such as the Xpert® MTB/RIF assay, are being implemented in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). However, timely information from these tests available via remote monitoring is underutilized. The failure to transmit real-time, actionable data to key individuals such as clinicians, patients, and national monitoring and evaluation teams may negatively impact patient care.
To describe recently developed applications that allow for real-time, remote monitoring of Xpert results, and initial implementation of one of these products in central Mozambique.
In partnership with the Mozambican National Tuberculosis Program, we compared three different remote monitoring tools for Xpert and selected one, GxAlert, to pilot and evaluate at five public health centers in Mozambique.
GxAlert software was successfully installed on all five Xpert computers, and test results are now uploaded daily via a USB internet modem to a secure online database. A password-protected web-based interface allows real-time analysis of test results, and 1200 positive tests for tuberculosis generated 8000 SMS result notifications to key individuals.
Remote monitoring of diagnostic platforms is feasible in LMICs. While promising, this effort needs to address issues around patient data ownership, confidentiality, interoperability, unique patient identifiers, and data security.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 3. 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 08 February 2016.
All research outputs
#15,063,934
of 25,371,288 outputs
Outputs from The International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease
#1,446
of 2,524 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#153,845
of 312,595 outputs
Outputs of similar age from The International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease
#25
of 55 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,371,288 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 40th percentile – i.e., 40% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 2,524 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a little more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 5.0. This one is in the 42nd percentile – i.e., 42% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 55 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 54% of its contemporaries.
