Ashoka Fellow and Microsoft Tackle Tuberculosis in Rural India - A Case Study, Part 3

This post contributed by Ashoka's Osman Ashai. The following is Part 3 in a case study series following Ashoka Fellow Hilmi Quraishi's collaboration with Microsoft to use mobile technology to educate the public and health care workers about Tuburculosis prevention and treatment.

Image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/focus2capture/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Ashoka Fellow Hilmi Quraishi and his organization, ZMQ, are working to tackle Tuberculosis in rural India through technology. With support from Microsoft and using their software, Quraishi and ZMQ have developed a two-pronged approach:

First: increase Tuberculosis awareness among the public.

Especially vulnerable are the youth and rural underserved communities, and Hilmi’s organization has come up with innovative ways to reach them through mobile phone learning and gaming. Hilmi and ZMQ are also increasing awareness among healthcare workers through a training program for frontline health workers at various health center and DOTS centers to understand the damage caused by Tuberculosis.

DOTS (which stands for "directly observed treatment, short-course") is a strategy recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO), which offers a free TB treatment and medicines at various health centers and government hospitals in over 180 countries world-wide, including India. According to DOTS strategy, the infected person meets a health worker or community volunteer, as a DOT provider, at a place where both agree on and take medicine under his/her direct supervision. The place can be a TB clinic or workplace.

Through Hilmi’s organization, ZMQ, DOT providers are learning how they can provide training to rural, semi-urban, and poor communities on Tuberculosis and create awareness on various aspects of TB like transmission, precautions and treatment while upholding WHO compliance.

Second: develop a health management and tracking system that uses applications to remotely monitor the health of individuals suffering from Tuberculosis.

The health management system is customizable based on the regions, communities, and specific disease being tracked. Some of the general features offered in this health management and tracking system are recordkeeping services of patient’s diagnosis, test result, and medical history, medication schedules, drug use, alerts, reminders, access to helplines and physicians.

Rural populations have traditionally been hard or impossible to reach for health care treatment, monitoring and education, but mobile technologies are closing that distance. Technologies and applications like Hilmi's and ZMQ's are connecting patients, health care workers and the public in a way that is already making large strides in the prevention and treatment of diseases in even the most remote locations.

Stay tuned for Part 4 with more process and progress toward eliminating TB through innovative technology.

View Part 1 and Part 2 for more about the beginning of the collaboration.

For more on Hilmi Quraishi and his mobile phone games that teach players about AIDS/HIV, check out this post on Ashoka's Changemakers blog.