Injury remains a major unaddressed global public health problem. Five million people die from traumatic events each year, outnumbering those dying from HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria combined. Furthermore, 90 percent of injury-related deaths occur in low and middle-income countries (LMICs), because they often lack the infrastructure and personnel for effective injury prevention and control. Road traffic injuries (RTIs) are the most common type of injury, now claiming 1.24 million lives each year. Nigeria has the highest burden of RTIs in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), and Lagos State has the highest population density in the region. Therefore, any interventions that can reduce the burden of RTIs in Nigeria will have significant impact of the burden of injury in SSA. Our overall goal is to reduce RTI-associated morbidity and mortality in sub-Saharan Africa by leveraging existing, low-cost mobile technology. This new process will make RTI data collection and analysis, inexpensive and seamless, and in the process, improve the effectiveness of first-responders to RTI victims. Our objectives in this proposal are to improve the accuracy of RTI location reporting using existing location-aware mobile technologies, and to reduce prehospital transport times for RTI victims in Lagos State, Nigeria by developing dynamic spatiotemporal, interactive RTI maps for ambulance teams. In order to accomplish this objective, we propose the following Specific Aims; (i) Develop a tool to improve RTI reporting accuracy in Lagos State, by integrating Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) communication protocols with ?data scraping? algorithms, and (ii) Develop a dynamic, hotspot- based facility allocation and ambulance dispatch strategy in Lagos State using the mobile RTI notification system We will use USSD protocols already available on all mobile phones, to identify the location of RTIs based on input by bystanders. Computer servers on the mobile network will process the data, initiate a search on social media, and provide accurate information to ambulance teams to assist them in rapidly finding the location and victims of the RTI, and promptly transferring them to the most appropriate, closest health facility. Upon completion of this study, we will have new, low-cost mobile tool that provides simple, accurate and reliable methods to improve the timeliness and accuracy of RTI reporting, shorten ambulance response times, and enhance triage decisions by first responders. We believe that this technology will represent a paradigm shift in data collection for a variety of diseases in low-resource settings.
More than 1.2 million people die from injuries each year, most from road traffic injuries (RTIs), and 90% of these deaths occur in LMICs. We propose to develop low-cost, mobile technology to improve the ability of first-responders to accurately locate, and transfer victims of RTI victims to appropriate treatment facilities.
