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Smartphone Ownership And Usage Among Pregnant Women Living With HIV In South Africa
Sandisiwe Noholoza;
Tamsin K Phillips;
Sindiswa Madwayi;
Megan Mrubata;
Carol S Camlin;
Landon Myer;
Kate Clouse
ABSTRACT
Background:
Mobile health (mHealth) initiatives are increasingly common in low-resource settings, but the appropriateness of smartphone interventions is uncertain.
Objective:
To inform future mHealth interventions, we describe smartphone ownership, preferences and usage patterns among women living with HIV (WLHIV) in Gugulethu, South Africa.
Methods:
We screened pregnant WLHIV from December 2019 - February 2021 for the CareConekta trial. We describe sociodemographic characteristics and mobile phone ownership of all women screened (n=639), and smartphone use patterns among those enrolled in the trial (n=193).
Results:
91% owned a mobile phone; 87% of those owned smartphones. Among those with smartphones, 92% used Android operating system version 5.0 or above, 98% of phones had GPS and 96% charged their phones
Conclusions:
Smartphone ownership is very common in this low-resource, peri-urban setting. Phone sharing was uncommon, nearly all used the Android system and phones retained sufficient battery life. These results are encouraging to the development of mHealth interventions. Existing messaging platforms – particularly WhatsApp – are exceedingly popular and could be leveraged for interventions.
Citation
Please cite as:
Noholoza S, Phillips TK, Madwayi S, Mrubata M, Camlin CS, Myer L, Clouse K
Smartphone Ownership and Usage Among Pregnant Women Living With HIV in South Africa: Secondary Analysis of CareConekta Trial Data