JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Gaining oversight over the rapidly growing number of mobile health (mHealth) tools for surveillance or outbreak management in Africa has become a challenge.

Objective:

The objective of this study was to map the functional portfolio of mHealth tools used for surveillance or outbreak management of communicable diseases in Africa.

Methods:

We conducted a scoping review by combining data from a systematic review of the literature and a telephone survey of experts. We applied the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines by searching for articles published between January 2010 and December 2020. We additionally used the respondent-driven sampling method and conducted a telephone survey among representatives from national public health institutes in all African countries. We combined the findings and used hierarchical clustering method to group the tools based on their functionalities (attributes).

Results:

We identified 30 tools out of 1914 publications and 45 responses from 28 (52%) out of 54 African countries. Four (13%: SORMAS, Go.Data, CommCare, and DHIS2) out of 30 tools covered 14 (93%) out of 15 identified attributes. Seventeen (59%) tools manage health events data, 20 (67%) manage case-based data and 28 (97%) offer a dashboard. Clustering identified 2 exceptional attributes for outbreak management, namely “contact follow-up” (offered by 8 tools), and “transmission network visualization” (offered by SORMAS and Go.Data).

Conclusions:

There is a large range of tools in use, yet the majority of them does not offer a comprehensive set of attributes, resulting in the need for public health workers having to use multiple tools in parallel. Only four tools cover the majority of the attributes, including those most relevant for the response to the COVID-19 pandemic such as laboratory interface, contact follow-up and transmission network visualization.