Roadmap

UiO plans to release a new generation mobile app for Android tablets and mobiles in Aug 2018. It will replace the current Data Capture, Event Capture and Tracker Capture apps. An SDK for others to develop their own application will also be released from May 2018. To work, it will require DHIS 2.30 (or better) as its backend.

The app user interface has been designed from scratch. The new user experience is centred around the frontline health worker as its main user. The user experience is based on ‘activities’ – the app doesn’t make any distinction between DHIS2’s three data domains (aggregate, events, tracker). New rendering options are to be offered to facilitate data collection, including the use of fully pictorial layouts for simple surveys.

The SDK streamlines data & metadata synchronization, keeping the whole DHIS2 data model associated to a user offline, in the most efficient way. For this we use new optimized API endpoints and metadata sync services, which are only available from DHIS 2.30 or greater.

You can find the timeline for how the functionalities voted (see results below) will be progressively included in the DHIS2 Android App below.

This plan is based on the voted features during June 2017, and technical considerations (mainly dependencies from the DHIS2 backend).

To follow the evolution of the App, please see the DHIS2’s Jira Android App Dashboard. It contains every single feature or modification that is on the development roadmap. You will need to register as a Jira user.

1. Unified ‘Done Tasks’ landing page

2. Aggregated domain data capture incorporates all the functionality in the web. This includes completion and validation.

3. Events

Events comes to life - it will be possible to include images/ icons to illustrate the questions and answers. The images below show a Program Stage Section composed by 3 data elements, all with associated images.

4. Integrated tracker search & creation

The workflow will always suggest for a user to search for a tracked entity before allowing creation. Search criteria can become data for creating a new tracked entity.

5. Tracker dashboard

A revamped dashboard brings a simplified interface that fully implements DHIS2’s powerful tracker data model. Enhancements to DHIS bring pictures and primary GPS to a Tracked Entity. Further improvements planned for 2.30 include the display of simple charts at the tracked entity level.

7. Multilingual

DHIS2’s web is available in 20+ languages. DHIS2 for Android will also be multilingual!

8. New Login

New ways to set the URL, and new ways to log into the app, including a simple PIN, will reduce the effort required for the deployment of the app in large implementations. Later in the year, we will implement multiuser.

9. Fast-lightning metadata sync

The new app will use RabbitMQ to synchronize metadata with the selected DHIS2 instance. This will dramatically reduce the time and the data transmitted when updating the metadata in the android app.

DHIS2’s Jira Android App Dashboard

The Jira Dashboard charts the evolution of the DHIS2 Android App - login into Jira to see the dashboard here

Background

During mid 2017 we conducted two surveys:

• of ongoing Android projects and their characterics
• Voting of DHIS2 Android features required by the community

1- Community Voting Process - results of voting (July 2017)

Community consultation of key features to be implemented on future Android app, ranked by voting score:

2- Ongoing Android Projects and characteristics

Results survey May-June 2017

Theses answers correspond to 54 projects. 67 % of them were ongoing, 29 % planned and 4 % were already finished.

Of those answers, 35% are run by Ministries of health and 34% by International NGOs

All ongoing projects are in the health domain. Android projects in other domains are present, but their representation is minimal.

Almost 50% of the projects are either medium size (up to 100 devices) or large (up to 250 devices). There is a significant number of Extra Large projects (more than 1,000 devices)

In the big majority of projects (67%) users do not share devices to collect data.

The most used DHIS2 Android App is Tracker Capture, which is used in 69% of the projects, followed by Event Capture (41%), Dashboard (39%) and Data Capture (30%).
22% of the organizations have developed their own Android Apps.

In 85% of the Tracker programs using Android, the tracked entity is a Person.

From all the projects who reported to be tracking people, 74% are health beneficiaries, clients or patients.

Only in 13 % of the projects, users report data from one single activity. In more than half of them (63%) data is collected from 2 to 5 different activities, while in 24 % the number of different activities is greater than 5.

In 32% of the projects users collect data from only one organisation unit. The most common case is collection across 2 to 5 organisation units.

Health Care Providers (67%) together with Community Health Workers (57%) represent the main users in current projects. Users from coordination positions are present in 43 % of the projects, followed by Laboratory technicians (19%).

All types of data collection are evenly represented across the surveyed projects. Projects working in Reactive mode are the less common, but still they constitute a 39% of the projects.