By @vincentminde, @rajab_mkomwa, @muhomis, and @honest.
Hello Everyone! My name is Vincent Minde from Tanzania, I am the Lead System Developer at the University of Dar es Salam (UDSM). Through the UDSM DHIS2 Lab(https://dhis2.udsm.ac.tz/), I have consulted and developed widely in the area of Information Systems, including the implementation of government systems in the Health, Social Welfare, and Agricultural Sector, using the DHIS2 for the past 8 years.
I would like to invite you to my presentation during the Annual Conference session named Interoperability country examples planned on Tuesday 21 June,10:30-12:00 Oslo time zone. This is a quick overview of my presentation.
Background
In recent years, developing countries have deployed mobile application systems to facilitate remote health data reporting and transmission to improve availability and quality. This has raised the demand for mobile tools to collect data from health service delivery points to utilization points at the national and sub-national levels.
While DHIS2 developed the Android SDK to offer custom development of DHIS2-based apps, mobile app developers face challenges developing the app that can be compiled to run into multiple mobile platforms (Android, iPhone) to offer users the flexibility of variance of user mobile phone platforms.
D2-Touch is a Mobile SDK inspired by DHIS2 Android SDK and developed by UDSM DHIS2 Lab based on flutter technology. The SDK aims to complement existing SDK by extending the use in building and deploying applications on multiple platforms (Android and iOS) with the focus of write once and use everywhere.
Methodology
UDSM DHIS2 Lab team researched modern mobile technologies that support multiple platforms, focusing on large community support around it. This went along with studying the current Android SDK implementation and other platforms’ specific needs. The team selected the Flutter framework supported by Google to develop the initial version of SDK. The D2-Touch has been tested on version 2.36.
Key features of D2-Touch include Offline Data collection, server syncing, program rule evaluation, and validation rule running offline. D2-Touch documentation is available at Overview | D2Touch (DHIS2 Flutter SDK) and source codes are available at GitHub - udsm-dhis2-lab/d2-touch.
Results
The D2-Touch SDK has been used to develop Tanzania’s eIDSR mobile application, released on 8th April 2022, and is now being rolled out around the country to report IDSR-related diseases. This was the first step as we standardized it for more use cases.
Conclusion
With a rollout of the eIDSR Mobile App, the SDK is being thoroughly tested on a large scale with multiple users to see how it works, and so far, it is working as expected. More apps are already in development, including a community TB app, and plans are in place to accommodate charts that can be used across all devices for consumption of managerial and political leaders through a mobile portal.
