Faculty of Science and Technology

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    Developing a mobile decision support system for monitoring child growth from 0 to 23 month of age
    (Mzumbe University, 2019) Fungo, Debora
    The application of mobile phone technology is growing rapidly in recent years. It has been adopted, inter-alias, in the health sector where it is growing rapidly worldwide. This is due to mobility, time efficiency, low cost, reliability, and user friendliness of the mobile healthcare. In Tanzania the adoption of mobile phone technology in healthcare is growing day to day, but still many applications are not oriented towards monitoring a child growth. This study had determined the challenges facing growth monitoring process in children and design a mobile application for monitoring growth in children between 0 and 23 years of age. This is because at this age a child needs special attention as any health problem can affect the future of a child’s life. The sample consisted of 30 parents and caregivers selected by purposive sampling procedure from 3 health centers in Morogoro municipality. The data was collected through interview and documentary review. The data collected from this study revealed that the growth monitoring process faces many challenges such as shortage of health personnel, lack of coordination, shortage of expertise in growth monitoring process, and limited number of healthcare centers. Also a distance between residence and the health centers affects the monthly clinic attendance. Moreover, the shortage of health workers in most of the health centers causes the growth monitoring process to take a long time. In some of the health centers there is no nutritional expert so it is difficult for parent to get good advice in case of child nutritional problems. Thus, this study presents the design of the Mobile Decision Support System (MDSS) for monitoring growth in children. This system will help parents to monitor growth of their children through smart phone. The system takes short time to complete growth monitoring process and it will be available all times i.e.24/7. The MDSS provides a flexible way of growth monitoring unlike the current method which is limited to be conducted from morning to afternoon. The system is designed and implemented in android platform, so that it can be accessed through android mobile phone. The evaluation of the proposed solution in terms of reliability, functionality and usability suggested that, is a worth and helping idea as 30 interviewed users responded positively.