NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

In rural environments around the world, frontline workers play a critical role in gathering information from – and delivering services to – their communities. Their work is vital to many industries and sectors – from health to agriculture, from NGOs and government programs to social enterprises. How we arm these workers goes a long way toward determining the effectiveness of their programs – and ultimately the quality of services they provide.

For years, these workers used paper forms and guides to collect data and administer services, leading to delays in data submission, problems with data accuracy (such as typos and redundancies), and trouble measuring program effectiveness and efficiency. But today, an emerging solution to these issues is to go mobile. Mobile data collection tools help address the challenges frontline workers face, helping them fulfill their responsibilities more quickly and accurately than before. Research has shown that digital tools can increase the number of beneficiaries frontline workers can reach by as much as 73 percent. In addition, beneficiaries also report an improved experience and relationship with frontline workers because of how easy it is for them to receive immediate value from the program.

But while the benefits of mobile data collection are clear, transitioning to a digital system is not as easy as simply digitizing existing paper forms. When you take the time to transfer a paper-based data collection or service delivery program to digital, it is an opportunity to reconcile your approach with the objectives of your program overall, allowing you to automate work, improve decision support, reduce redundancies, minimize data entry errors typically found in paper-based systems, and add new content types, such as multimedia. Below are a few examples of these benefits.

Automating work

When it comes to automating work, a good example of the benefits of transitioning from paper to digital may be seen with the partograph. The partograph is a paper form, recommended by the World Health Organization, to detect maternal and fetal complications. While the paper partograph is an effective tool if used correctly, it involves a multi-axis graph that is difficult to use, leading to errors and low adoption rates among health workers. To address these issues, FHI 360 partnered with Dimagi to create a mobile-based application called mLabour which digitized the partograph, automating these calculations and reducing the burden on health workers. This mobile partograph, built on Dimagi’s app-building platform CommCare, is currently in use in Tanzania, where program managers are seeing promising results, and health workers are reporting that the tool is “easier to use [and] less disruptive to [their] work.”

Improving decision support

Relatedly, digital solutions also help improve decision support. For example, when a frontline worker inputs data, they can receive a notification of what they have to do next (e.g. refer the beneficiary to a clinic, prescribe a certain treatment, etc.). The immediacy of this feedback is what improves the relationship between the frontline worker and the beneficiary – the faster the value arrives for the beneficiary, the more likely they are to appreciate the program.

Reducing Redundancies and Minimizing Data Entry Errors

Recently, Dimagi worked with Save the Children to help them transform their paper-based data collection program into digital. There were three forms for which they were required to collect information: two from the local Ministry of Health and one of their own. Instead of creating three surveys on a single app, we reviewed the questions asked by each. Not only did we find significant overlap – especially in areas such as demographics and medical history – but we were able to sequence all the questions in a way that made sense in a single flow. This both decreased the time required to administer the survey and increased the accuracy of the responses.

There are many other benefits of mobile data collection, such as the ability to validate responses as they are given, determine which question appears next based on the answer to the last, and collate data across follow-up forms, so there’s no need to ask the same question twice.

Incorporating Multimedia 

Sometimes, it takes a little bit more to communicate with your beneficiaries. Including multimedia, such as instructional videos or audio files, can help drive home a point, lend credibility to your instruction and engage your beneficiaries. In one program Dimagi worked with, community health workers administered a pregnancy checklist to their patients. By incorporating short video and audio files, we ensured that their instruction was clear, consistent and engaging. To go one step further, organizations might even incorporate a workflow that captures images or video from the beneficiaries themselves, such as a headshot during a registration form.

Check out Dimagi’s comprehensive guide to Mobile Data Collection.

Sam Farnham is the Senior Editor & Content Strategist for Dimagi.

Image provided by organization.