Relevance of Participatory Approaches in Creating ICT Systems for Public Health Programmes
Priyanka Ivatury, Angel Jeena, Amit Prakash · 2017
In this paper, we present a case for using participatory approaches in the design and development of information and communications technology or ICT-based systems to incorporate the complexities embedded in the Indian public health sector and bring desired changes, especially in programme implementation processes. A team of researchers worked closely with prospective users and various other relevant stakeholders as a part of an ongoing action research project involving health facilities in Kolar district of the southern Indian state of Karnataka over a ten month period. These interactions with health workers and medical professionals responsible for administering the National Programme for Prevention and Control of Cancer, Diabetes, Cardiovascular Diseases & Stroke (NPCDCS) provided useful insights in designing and developing an automated reporting system for use initially in a community health centre (CHC). An ongoing and continuous involvement is helping in enlisting a high degree of participation thereby allowing co-creation of more improved variants of the ICT-based reporting system.