Researchers with the Johns Hopkins Center for Clinical Global Health Education (CCGHE) https://main.ccghe.net are studying to see if technology can assist with the Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission (PMTCT) by using Antiretroviral Therapy (ART) to prevent HIV mother to infant transmission.
To begin, researchers sent a group of HIV outreach workers to visit the homes of pregnant or breastfeeding women with specially designed videos in the native language of the mothers focused exclusively on breastfeeding and how to correctly take ART medicines.
The researchers discussed issues related to disclosure of HIV status, need to test babies for HIV, collected information using smart forms available on the emocha Mobile Health’s Platform https://emocha.com, and sent text alerts for upcoming and missed visits to mothers with HIV.
The JHU’s emocha Mobile Health Platform was initially created to educate community healthcare workers treating HIV patients in remote regions of Uganda. Developed as a research and education tool, emocha has evolved into a platform for use for researchers and clinicians alike to connect with patients across the globe.
After two years, mothers and mothers-to-be who used technological aids showed significantly increased uptake of exclusive breastfeeding at two months as well as early infant diagnosis at six weeks as compared to a control group, according to results published July 3, 2020 in the Journal of the International AIDS Society https://www.jiasociety.org.
Outreach workers found the tablet-based technology and companion interventions to be scalable, feasible, and beneficial for PMTCT. While some outreach workers were apprehensive about using tablets, they generally found the message prompts important for collecting clinical data and for conveying health education and messages.