Development and Initial Validation of a Frontline Health Worker mHealth Assessment Platform (MEDSINC) for Children 2–60 Months of Age
Research article in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene, with results indicating that the THINKMD platform, previously referred to as MEDSINC, could significantly increase pediatric health-care capacity in LMICs by improving FLW’s ability to accurately assess health status and triage of children, facilitating early life-saving therapeutic interventions.

Key take-aways:

 

  • A majority of deaths that occur in LMICs among children under 5 from conditions such as pneumonia, dehydration (diarrhea) and malaria can be prevented with early clinical risk assessments and appropriate therapeutic intervention
  • Initial validation testing of THINKMD’s clinical risk assessment platform, designed for frontline health workers to perform clinical risk assessments of children aged 2-60 months, was performed on 861 children by 49 FHWs in Burkina Faso, Ecuador and Bangladesh
  • Results demonstrate that clinical risk assessments by FHWs using the THINKMD platform had a specificity correlation between 84% and 99% to local health providers
  • THINKMD’s platform’s triage recommendation distributions were highly correlated with those of local health providers
  • THINKMD’s clinical risk assessment platform has the potential to significantly increase pediatric healthcare capacity in LMICs by improving FHWs ability to accurately assess health status and triage of children, facilitating early-life therapeutic interventions