CommCare is a project to help strengthen and monitor community health programs by building mobile tools for CHWs. The project is comprised of an open source J2ME application and an open source Django backend.
CommCare is being developed by many organizations. Learn more more from our partners at Dimagi and D-Tree.
In low-resource settings, there are often a many challenges to healthcare access for rural populations. As a result, people often delay seeking healthcare until very late, which often turns a treatable illness into a severe concern.
Community Health Workers (CHWs), are often in the best position to provide health education and promote health practices. They can encourage individuals to take advantage of health services and detect early signs of illnesses like tuberculosis and malaria.
CommCare seeks to provide a tool for CHWs to perform their day-to-day tasks. By taking advantage of the mobile phone, whose large user-base is continuing to rise, as a computing platform growing, we are able to provide a tool for CHWs to track and monitor the households they are responsible for.
Dimagi posted a video on YouTube demonstrating some of the functionality they are adding to CommCare for a deployment in India focusing on safer pregnancy practices and maternal health. CommCare now has the ability to display images and use audio prompts directly in the questionnaire/visit form.
Very cool!