Bixby Center for Population, Health and Sustainability, University of California, Berkeley, California, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2013 Jun 12;8(6):e65772. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0065772. Print 2013.
In low-resource settings, community health workers are frontline providers who shoulder the health service delivery burden. Increasingly, mobile technologies are developed, tested, and deployed with community health workers to facilitate tasks and improve outcomes. We reviewed the evidence for the use of mobile technology by community health workers to identify opportunities and challenges for strengthening health systems in resource-constrained settings.
We conducted a systematic review of peer-reviewed literature from health, medical, social science, and engineering databases, using PRISMA guidelines. We identified a total of 25 unique full-text research articles on community health workers and their use of mobile technology for the delivery of health services.
Community health workers have used mobile tools to advance a broad range of health aims throughout the globe, particularly maternal and child health, HIV/AIDS, and sexual and reproductive health. Most commonly, community health workers use mobile technology to collect field-based health data, receive alerts and reminders, facilitate health education sessions, and conduct person-to-person communication. Programmatic efforts to strengthen health service delivery focus on improving adherence to standards and guidelines, community education and training, and programmatic leadership and management practices. Those studies that evaluated program outcomes provided some evidence that mobile tools help community health workers to improve the quality of care provided, efficiency of services, and capacity for program monitoring.
Evidence suggests mobile technology presents promising opportunities to improve the range and quality of services provided by community health workers. Small-scale efforts, pilot projects, and preliminary descriptive studies are increasing, and there is a trend toward using feasible and acceptable interventions that lead to positive program outcomes through operational improvements and rigorous study designs. Programmatic and scientific gaps will need to be addressed by global leaders as they advance the use and assessment of mobile technology tools for community health workers.
在资源匮乏的环境中，社区卫生工作者是承担卫生服务提供负担的一线提供者。越来越多的移动技术是为了方便社区卫生工作者的工作并改善成果而开发、测试和部署的。我们回顾了社区卫生工作者使用移动技术的证据，以确定在资源有限的环境中加强卫生系统的机会和挑战。
我们使用 PRISMA 指南对健康、医学、社会科学和工程数据库中的同行评议文献进行了系统综述。我们总共确定了 25 篇关于社区卫生工作者及其使用移动技术提供卫生服务的独特全文研究文章。
社区卫生工作者在全球范围内使用移动工具来推进广泛的健康目标，特别是母婴健康、艾滋病毒/艾滋病和性健康与生殖健康。社区卫生工作者最常使用移动技术来收集基于现场的健康数据、接收警报和提醒、促进健康教育课程以及进行人际沟通。旨在加强卫生服务提供的方案工作重点是提高对标准和指南的遵守情况、社区教育和培训以及方案领导和管理实践。那些评估方案成果的研究提供了一些证据表明，移动工具有助于社区卫生工作者提高提供的护理质量、服务效率和方案监测能力。
证据表明，移动技术为改善社区卫生工作者提供的服务范围和质量提供了有希望的机会。小规模努力、试点项目和初步描述性研究正在增加，并且有一个趋势是使用可行和可接受的干预措施，通过运营改进和严格的研究设计来实现积极的方案成果。全球领导人需要解决方案和科学方面的差距，以推进移动技术工具在社区卫生工作者中的使用和评估。
