Vaccine Confidence Project Launch Red Light Green Light Trial

We’re delighted to announce that a research pilot we’ve advised on, help design, and delivered the technical implementation for, has started collecting data at health clinics in Uganda.  Partnering with the Vaccine Confidence Project research team at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, Maldaba has delivered a tablet-based rapid response app to see if we can improve the quality of service provision.

Funded by the Gates Foundation, and in collaboration with the MRC, the project captures user’s experience of their clinic visit using simple, locally-recognised graphics, and recorded audio in Luganda to mitigate low literacy levels.  The data is transmitted to a web server that researchers and clinic staff can access via a browser, and review aggregated responses for the week.

Researchers want to find out if providing medical staff with weekly feedback on patients’ experience in the clinic improves the quality of clinic visits.  The app asks an initial question about their experience, and – based on their response – asks a further set of questions either on the positive arm, or on the negative arm.  The web analytics provides a breakdown of positive and negative responses, as well information on which areas of the visit where most positive or negative.

The app and analytics form part of the project, which includes feedback evaluation sessions at the clinics, to see how staff can improve users’ responses.  Researchers will  be monitoring the trial and will conduct focus group discussions to evaluate the trial and its components.

It’s been a very enjoyable project for Maldaba to work on, and get into what we love to do: help researchers design and implement trials that make the best use of technology.  We learnt something new (smiley face iconography was no good because in Uganda someone will sometimes make an unhappy face with their mouth down to indicate they are pleased).  And we had a great time listening to Luganda for the first time in our lives!

If all goes well with the pilot, the research team will roll-out the intervention in other settings, including Kenya.