MPneumonia: Development of an Innovative mHealth Application for Diagnosing and Treating Childhood Pneumonia and Other Childhood Illnesses in Low-Resource Settings.

ABSTRACT: Pneumonia is the leading infectious cause of death in children worldwide. Each year, pneumonia kills an estimated 935,000 children under five years of age, with most of these deaths occurring in developing countries. The current approach for pneumonia diagnosis in low-resource settings--using the World Health Organization Integrated Management of Childhood Illness (IMCI) paper-based protocols and relying on a health care provider's ability to manually count respiratory rate--has proven inadequate. Furthermore, hypoxemia--a diagnostic indicator of the presence and severity of pneumonia often associated with an increased risk of death--is not assessed because pulse oximetry is frequently not available in low-resource settings. In an effort to address childhood pneumonia mortality and improve

SUBMITTER: Ginsburg AS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4608740 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature