CAST Comes to Liberia
Ponseti practitioners from MiracleFeet-sponsored clinics in Liberia and Guinea gathered last month to receive training on CAST, a new mobile app that will help improve treatment quality and outcomes. CAST was designed by Dimagi, a tech company that focuses on solutions for low-resource settings.
Read more about the 3-year, $1M grant from Google.org that made this project possible.
After a little over a year of piloting two versions of the app in India, Madagascar, and Republic of the Congo, version 3 has now come to Liberia!
Over 20 providers participated in the three-day training at the FACORC clinic in Monrovia. Participants had the opportunity to practice creating patient records and inputting data as they familiarized themselves with the app and its workflow. Perhaps just as important was the informal support providers were able to give each other as they discussed the challenges faced in their own clinics.
Liberia has suffered tremendously after two back-to-back civil wars in the 90s and early 2000s, and again in the aftermath of the 2014 Ebola epidemic (check out this timeline for more information about Liberia’s history). As providers tested the app, they also discussed topics such as:
- How to do effective patient follow up when people are unable to describe where they live
- How to spread awareness to leaders of the community so they can advocate for clubfoot treatment
- How to help provide for other needs of the child, for example, if they are malnourished or have contracted malaria
In such a challenging climate, it was clear that the providers were not only treating clubfoot but also acting as a resource for many other health issues people face in their communities. One provider, Theo, said he was especially excited that the app would prevent data entry errors that could be easy to make when busy or frazzled, such as forgetting to record a phone number.
We’re excited to be able to help Liberia access exciting new technologies in mHealth, and we look forward to seeing the ways in which the app can help those working in clinics throughout this West African nation.
