Abstract:
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
mobile healthcare. In Tanzania, the adoption of mobile phone technology in healthcare is
growing day today, 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.
Description:
A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Award of the
Degree of Masters of Science (Information Technology and Systems) in the
Department of Computing Studies, Mzumbe University