Adoption, usage and impact of Family Folder Collector (FFC) on a mobile Android tablet device in rural Thailand.

• Main Authors: Chong, Vanessa Wan Ting., Lim, Michelle Huimin., Rodricks, Regina Marian.
• Other Authors: Arul Indrasen Chib
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2012
• Subjects: DRNTU::Social sciences::Communication::Communication theories and models
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/50191
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The area of mobile healthcare (mHealth) is a growing field in developing countries (Chib, 2010; Chib & Chen, 2011; Vital Wave Consulting & Vodafone Foundation, 2009). There have been studies on how health services is conducted on mobile phones, however there is a gap in current literature in understanding how the use of tablet personal computers (PCs) can affect healthcare provision in developing countries. This paper examines the implementation of a Family Folder Collector (FFC) healthcare application used on the Samsung Galaxy Tab in the province of Ubon Ratchathani, Thailand. The FFC is an Android-based application developed to replace the physical paper folder system of medical data-collection. Using the Extended Technology-Community-Management (TCM) Model (Lee & Chib, 2008), we examine the impact of the device. 41 qualitative in-depth interviews were conducted over a period of three weeks at healthcare centres and patients’ homes. Respondents included Community Health Workers (CHW) (24), volunteers (3), patients (8) and project administrators (6). Our research has shown that the tablet PC is sustainable in rural healthcare. Findings revealed that community factors like needs, training, and ownership were crucial in CHW’s usage of the FFC, and contributed greatly to the success of the project. Managerial factors like finance and partners played a bigger role than regulations in its impact on FFC. Socio-cultural vulnerabilities were observed to not exist in this programme. It is shown that even with sustainability; the impact of the initiative is limited and not yet being maximised to its fuller potential.