eMOCHA is a free open-source application, developed by the Johns Hopkins Center for Clinical Global Health Education. eMOCHA is designed to assist health programs in developing countries improve provider communication and education, as well as patient care, by coordinating wireless devices with local server-based clinical training and patient care support services.
What can eMOCHA Do?
The software package consists of two applications.
One component runs on Android-supported wireless devices (e.g. smartphones).
The smartphone works as a GPS-linked clinical data gathering application (using ODK), an interactive training device (e.g. supporting videos, distance learning courses and other clinical support tools) and a medical consult tool (e.g. using the voice calling capabilities and the camera on the phone to communicate with to a consultant doctor on call). A messaging system embedded in the client provides encrypted two way messaging between the medical staff and the community health workers.
The second component runs on a web server with PHP and MySQL.
The server application collects, analyzes and displays the collected clinical information and statistics. The server application also allow users to design, create and push out to specific smartphones, a variety of user-defined valuable tools and content including:
- Simple touch-screen forms for collecting specific patient data from the field.
- Clinical algorithms and checklists to assist providers in implementing best clinical practices in the field, while collecting patient data.
- Video files to demonstrate specific clinical or laboratory procedures on the phone.
- Interactive training courses, that include touch screen tools to test providers on their knowledge and understanding of the training.
- Links to webcasts, clinical support tools, consult opinions, clinical updates.
What makes eMOCHA Unique?
eMOCHA is designed to synergize the power of wireless mobile collection of patient data, the capacity of the new Android-supported devices to display high quality interactive touch screen forms, as well as video and audio files, with the power of server-based applications to analyze and GPS-map large amounts of data from the community and to create new training content in a variety of formats.
Therefore, eMOCHA is designed to efficiently coordinate and accomplish 5 very key steps for any clinical training program:
- To use clinical data collected from the point-of-care, to identify which health care workers in the community need to be trained.
- To analyze the clinical data, to identify the most critical knowledge or skill they need.
- To create and efficiently deliver high-quality training content to target these specific training needs.
- To evaluate the impact of this training, based on data collected directly from the field, to ensure that provider knowledge and skills improve and result in better health for their patients.
- To empower the providers in their communities, at the point-of-care, with the tools to monitor and improve their own clinical care practice.
When will it be available?
We will have a stable beta release ready for mid 2010.
How can I help?
We will soon post a task list so people can participate more actively.