In an effort to scale up the use of digital technology to aid in managing the COVID-19 pandemic in low-resource settings, the mUzima team has enhanced the mUzima for Health Providers application to implement  the mUzima for COVID-19 App. mUzima is a mobile extension of the widely deployed OpenMRS electronic medical record system, allowing for use of this COVID-19 implementation in numerous countries.

This first version of mUzima for COVID-19 App primarily focuses on supporting screening, contract tracing and capturing of testing information. The mUzima for COVID-19 application uses forms designed in line guidelines from the World Health Organization. This implementation was spurred by requests from the Ministry of Health in Kenya, and is available for adaptation for other use cases.

The mUzima for COVID application incorporates several key features:

• Data collection: Forms include individual registration, contact registration, exposure, screening, testing and results forms.
• Contact tracing: mUzima leverages its to enable recording of contacts for tracing.
• Historical data review: The health worker can view a COVID-19 patient’s historical data even when offline, with relevant data availed from the Electronic Health record system
• Geo-mapping: GPS feature is leveraged for locating individuals primarily for contact-tracing. We currently only leverage mapping features for this purpose, and geo-tracing is done with individual’s consent.
• Privacy and confidentiality: All data within mUzima is encrypted within the mobile device and exchange with secured electronic record system.

Patient data privacy was considered in the development of mUzima for COVID-19 application. All the collected patients’ information is stored in OpenMRS database.

The first version of mUzima for COVID-19 app is to be implemented  in Kenya and works with Android versions 5.0 to 9.0. mUzima can be downloaded for free from play.google.com. For more information on mUzima for COVID-19 App:

Email: info@muzima.org

Wiki: wiki.muzima.org

Twitter: @mUzimamobile