A mobile phone based antenatal appointment management system. Case study: Uganda Martyrs Hospital Lubaga

Abstract

Low utilization of antenatal care services is one of the reasons that have kept maternal and child mortality high in most of the developing world WHO 2012. Millennium development goals (MDGs) 4 and 5 aim at reducing mortality of mothers and infants. Some of the reasons forwarded for this poor trend in antenatal care (ANC) utilization are; mothers’ forgetfulness about their ANC visit schedules because of long distances to and from the health units and poor information management which lead to the fear that if they lost their ANC card then there is no need for them to visit the clinic. As a result, nearly 3.8 million lives of mothers and children are lost annually in sub-Saharan Africa, due to pregnancy complications which are preventable given proper and adequate ANC. Therefore, this study is set out to find out how to manage information and simplify communication in order to improve ANC services. The current ANC service process was studied and this helped the researcher to develop a mobile phone based antenatal appointment management system to help in reminding mothers about their ANC schedules and allocate time.The system is meant to register mothers for ANC, follow up their ANC visit details and conditions during pregnancy until delivery. It is also meant to register staff at the antenatal clinic and make their work easier, especially data and Management Information. Uganda Martyrs Hospital Lubaga antenatal clinic was used as a case study. Data was collected using interviews and observation to ascertain the existing antenatal care processes and their challenges. Microsoft Excel was used in analyzing the data. Then a design for the mobile phone antenatal appointment management system (MPBAAMS) was done and the system was developed and tested. If adopted, MPBAAMS will improve the level of antenatal care service utilization by mothers. The MPBAAMS will also help to improve antenatal service delivery by managing antenatal care communication at the antenatal clinic. It is hoped that this will help in reducing maternal mortality.