Development of a First Aid Smartphone App for Use by Untrained Healthcare Workers .
Date
2017-12-23
Authors
Spies, Chel-Marí
Khalaf, Abdelbaset
Hamam, Yskander
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Abstract
In the sub-Saharan African context, there is an enormous shortage of healthcare
workers, causing communities to experience major deficiencies in basic healthcare.
The improvement of basic emergency healthcare can alleviate the lack of assistance
to people in emergency situations and improve services to rural communities. The
study described in this article, which took place in South Africa, was the first phase of
development and testing of an automated clinical decision support system (CDSS)
tool for first aid. The aim of the tool, a mobile smartphone app, is that it can assist
untrained healthcare workers to deliver basic emergency care to patients who do
not have access to, or cannot urgently get to, a medical facility. And the tool seeks to
provide assistance that does not require the user to have diagnostic knowledge, i.e.,
the app guides the diagnostic process as well as the treatment options.
Description
Keywords
first aid, emergency treatment, m-health, smartphone app, clinical decision support system (CDSS), rural healthcare, resuscitation, rule-based algorithms, artificial intelligence (AI), Africa, South Africa
Citation
Spies, C., Khalaf, A., & Hamam, Y. (2017). Development of a first aid smartphone app for use by untrained healthcare workers. The African Journal of Information and Communication (AJIC), 20, 31-47. https://doi.org/10.23962/10539/23577