Description of Session
This session will highlight PATH’s experience using digital technologies to address the TB epidemic in Tanzania, Ukraine, and India and will provide evidence and insights to inform global policy and enable further technology improvement and innovation. For Tanzania, we will present TAMBUA TB app’s two modules. One module increases public awareness of TB and allows anyone with a basic mobile phone to self-screen for TB symptoms by answering a series of questions. From September 2018 to April 2019, 229,898 individuals self-screened, and 166,758 self-reported as presumptive. The second module provides TB patients treatment adherence support by sending SMS reminders and messages based on their treatment schedule. Health care workers (HCWs) enroll patients in the service, which simultaneously enrolls patients in the national TB registry, demonstrating how building off existing government technology can improve HCW workload efficiency. In Ukraine, PATH supports TB patients to increase treatment completion rates with two distinct digital interventions—“medication event reminder boxes” and video technology to 1) reduce patients’ need to visit clinics in person and 2) reduce HCW workload and health care system costs while enhancing patients’ autonomy and decreasing stigma. With the boxes, patients receive alerts and are monitored remotely by HCWs through an online dashboard when the box is opened to retrieve medication. With video technology, an HCW observes the patient taking their medication regardless of where the patient is. In India, PATH is piloting artificial intelligence to increase efficiency of TB screening using Qure.ai to detect abnormal chest X-rays and refer them to professional radiologists for further analysis. This process helps reduce HCW workload and reduces need for TB diagnostics at lower levels of the health care system. It also helps people receive a faster TB diagnosis and initiate treatment quickly so they are less likely to transmit TB.
