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A customized m-Health system for improving Tuberculosis treatment adherence and follow-up in south India

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Abstract

Tuberculosis is a major public health problem in India with more than 2 million new cases every year. With the growing crisis of inadequate healthcare workforce, monitoring of drug treatment for Tuberculosis is an arduous task. mHealth services (healthcare using mobile communication technologies) are gaining support as an effective tool to handle the situation, especially where technological and human resources are limited. This paper illustrates the delivery of a mHealth service with insights into the feasibility and applicability of deploying a voice call based reminder system for drug adherence in a resource limited setting.

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Acknowledgments

The project was funded by the IU-ATC project of the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India, Australia India Institute and the UK EPSRC Digital Economy Program.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Public Health and Community Medicine, The University of New South Wales, Room 217, Level 2, Samuels Building, Kensington, Sydney, Australia, NSW, 2052

    Padmanesan Narasimhan & Chandini Raina MacIntyre

  2. Asia Pacific Ubiquitous Healthcare Research Centre (APuHC), Australian School of Business, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, NSW, 2052

    Padmanesan Narasimhan, Aishwarya Bakshi, Chandini Raina MacIntyre & Pradeep Ray

  3. Rural Technology Business Incubator, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, IITM Research Park, Taramani, Chennai, India

    Sathyapriya Kittusami & Suma Prashant

  4. Apollo Institute of Medical Sciences, Apollo Health City, Jubilee Hills, Hyderabad, India

    Dilip Mathai

  5. Kalyani Institute for Policy Action and Rural Change, Kalyani, West Bengal, India

    Kasturi Bakshi

Authors
  1. Padmanesan Narasimhan
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  2. Aishwarya Bakshi
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  3. Sathyapriya Kittusami
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  4. Suma Prashant
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  5. Dilip Mathai
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  6. Kasturi Bakshi
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  7. Chandini Raina MacIntyre
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  8. Pradeep Ray
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Padmanesan Narasimhan.

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Narasimhan, P., Bakshi, A., Kittusami, S. et al. A customized m-Health system for improving Tuberculosis treatment adherence and follow-up in south India. Health Technol. 4, 1–10 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12553-013-0067-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12553-013-0067-2

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