Telemedicine: Malawi Cell Phone Based RapidSMS Child Malnutrition Surveillance

The RapidSMS Child Malnutrition Surveillance project is an effort by a team of six students at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) to use mobile technology solutions to improve the speed and quality of nutrition surveillance data for children in Malawi. The work will involve a pilot study to replace the paper/mail data collection process currently in use at Malawi’s child growth monitoring clinics with instantaneous data transmission via mobile devices.

The project will enable the Government of Malawi, UNICEF Malawi, and their partners to geographically map and track child malnutrition trends accurately and in real time. This tool will provide a critical means of intervention into rapidly unfolding food and nutrition crises. If successful, the pilot will serve as a model to scale up the use of mobile devices in other nutrition and food security surveillance systems worldwide.