Mobile phones can reduce disease surveillance cost

Use of mobile phones can significantly reduce the time and cost of disease surveillance, according to the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research (IEDCR).

The institute reported the finding based on two surveys.

Instead of going door-to-door with questionnaires, IEDCR officials, under the project Cell Phone Based Disease Surveillance System, randomly selected people to gather information about diseases and behavioural risk factors over phone.

The project obtained the phone numbers from six telecom operators and conducted 3,569 interviews between January and April this year. The first round of the survey, conducted last year, interviewed 3,297 people.

IEDCR Director Prof Mahmudur Rahman revealed the information at a dissemination seminar held at his office in the capital yesterday.

"The information gathered from the surveys will be given to policymakers of the health sector so that they can make informed decisions," he said.

He, however, also mentioned limitations of conducting surveys over phone.

"Important information such as height, weight and age of the person cannot be ascertained without face-to-face interviews," he explained.

But, the potential of this approach is immense, he said.

"The number of mobile phone users is over 12.36 crore, which is 75 percent of the population. So people representing different regions can be reached within a short period," said Mahmudur Rahman.

The two rounds of surveys were focused on communicable diseases.  

Khaleda Islam, senior scientific officer at IEDCR, said the US has been conducting phone based surveillance since 1984, and countries like Australia, Brazil, Canada, China and Italy have been trying to introduce it.