Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Formative Research
Date Submitted: Oct 27, 2022
Date Accepted: Apr 23, 2023
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Smartphone Ownership and Use Among Pregnant Women with HIV In South Africa
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.
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