Use of mobile technology-based participatory mapping approaches to geolocate health facility attendees for disease surveillance in low resource settings

摘要

Background Identifying fine-scale spatial patterns of disease is essential for effective disease control and elimination programmes. In low resource areas without formal addresses, novel strategies are needed to locate residences of individuals attending health facilities in order to efficiently map disease patterns. We aimed to assess the use of Android tablet-based applications containing high resolution maps to geolocate individual residences, whilst comparing the functionality, usability and cost of three software packages designed to collect spatial information.