MTrac

Overview: Data from health centres on infections, treatment and deaths are verified and analysed to improve health care delivery and to improve stock management - stopping centres from running out of essential drugs.

This open source RapidSMS system has been designed for weekly health data collection, originally on malaria statistics hence the name. Health workers are given paper sheets to complete with cases of diseases. They use their own mobile phones free of charge to send SMS to the Ministry of Health to report cases as a series of 8 digits, which is then aggregated and gives the Ministry an overall picture of disease incidence across the country.

The MTrac programme has received funding from DFID to move into phase 2. It’s run by UNICEF and supported by WHO.