Perceived mHealth barriers and benefits for home-based HIV testing and counseling and other care: Qualitative findings from health officials, community health workers, and persons living with HIV in South Africa.

ABSTRACT: mHealth has been proposed to address inefficiencies in the current South African healthcare system, including home-based HIV testing and counseling (HTC) programs. Yet wide-scale adoption of mHealth has not occurred. Even as infrastructure barriers decrease, a need to better understand perceived adoption barriers by stakeholders remains. We conducted focus group discussions (FGD) in South Africa in 2016 with 10 home-based HTC field staff, 12 community health workers (CHWs) and 10 persons living with HIV (PLH). Key informant (KI) interviews were conducted with five health officials. Perceptions about current home-based HTC practices, future mHealth systems and the use of biometrics for patient identification were discussed, recorded and transcribed for qualitative analysis. Themes were base

SUBMITTER: van Heerden A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5515289 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature