Development and implementation of software for educating and tracking antenatal care clients using cell phones: the case of Zanzibar

This study aimed to implement a cost effective mechanism to remind ANC clients on their visits and also to educate them on identifying the danger signs by sending them educational messages relating to their health, using SMS based system. This is sought to be the mechanism to reduce the rate of defaulting by closely following up on pregnant mothers. The methodology used to realize a successful deployment of the system is through the Spiral Model of System Development Life Cycle (SDLC). This includes the four quadrants of understanding, designing, implementation and testing of the system. The designing and Implementation of this system was through the Object Oriented design, which makes use of objects, putting together the database server for storage and retrieval of information, the Short Message Service (SMS) gateway to dispatch SMS and the web interface to make the interaction with the system user friendly. Currently the system is fully functional, and it is used as intended, the clients are registered to the system and their information is processed and as a final results, information is produced for reporting and also the information needed to dispatch the messages is also been retrieved. Currently the system has registered 1206 clients, among them 727 (60%) has access to cell phones, and this is the recipient group. As a result, a short survey done by DANIDA in July 2010 through the wired mother project shows that the number of mothers delivering in health facilities, and the ANC attendances has significantly increased compared to the practice before the system was introduced, also among the registered mothers, 42% of mothers has called at least once to seek medical related advice using the number included in the SMS.