Smartphones Cheaper, More Effective Than Paper Surveys For Disease Monitoring, Study Suggests

“Using smartphones is cheaper and more effective than using paper surveys to monitor diseases in the developing world, according to a new study by Kenyan researchers with the [CDC] … presented Monday at the International Conference on Emerging Infectious Diseases in Atlanta,” the International Business Times reports. “The study compared 1,019 paper-based questionnaires to 1,019 smartphone questionnaires collected at four sample sites for influenza surveillance in Kenya,” the news service notes (3/12).

“‘Collecting data using smartphones has improved the quality of our data and given us a faster turnaround time to work with it,’ said Henry Njuguna, sentinel surveillance coordinator at [CDC] Kenya. ‘It also helped us save on the use of paper and other limited resources,'” India’s Economic Times writes (3/12). “For two years, the cost of establishing and running a paper-based data collection system was approximately $61,830 compared to approximately $45,546 for a smartphone data collection system,” according to a CDC press release (3/12).

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