Telehealth Care for Mothers and Infants to Improve the Continuum of Care: Protocol for a Quasi-Experimental Study

Kimiyo Kikuchi; Rafiqul Islam; Yoko Sato; Mariko Nishikitani; Rieko Izukura; Nusrat Jahan; Fumihiko Yokota; Subaru Ikeda; Nazneen Sultana; Meherun Nessa; Morshed Nasir; Ashir Ahmed; Kiyoko Kato; Seiichi Morokuma; Naoki Nakashima

doi:10.2196/41586

Telehealth Care for Mothers and Infants to Improve the Continuum of Care: Protocol for a Quasi-Experimental Study

JMIR Res Protoc. 2022 Dec 15;11(12):e41586. doi: 10.2196/41586.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Department of Health Sciences, Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan.
² Medical Information Center, Kyushu University Hospital, Fukuoka, Japan.
³ Social Medicine, Department of Basic Medicine, Faculty of Medical Sciences, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan.
⁴ Grameen Communications, Dhaka, Bangladesh.
⁵ Institute for Asian and Oceanian Studies, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan.
⁶ Holy Family Red Crescent Medical College & Hospital, Dhaka, Bangladesh.
⁷ Faculty of Information Science and Electrical Engineering, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan.
⁸ Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan.

PMID: 36520523
PMCID: PMC9801263
DOI: 10.2196/41586

Abstract

Background: Ensuring an appropriate continuum of care in maternal, newborn, and child health, as well as providing nutrition care, is challenging in remote areas. To make care accessible for mothers and infants, we developed a telehealth care system called Portable Health Clinic for Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health.

Objective: Our study will examine the telehealth care system's effectiveness in improving women's and infants' care uptake and detecting their health problems.

Methods: A quasi-experimental study will be conducted in rural Bangladesh. Villages will be allocated to the intervention and control areas. Pregnant women (≥16 gestational weeks) will participate together with their infants and will be followed up 1 year after delivery or birth. The intervention will include regular health checkups via the Portable Health Clinic telehealth care system, which is equipped with a series of sensors and an information system that can triage participants' health levels based on the results of their checkups. Women and infants will receive care 4 times during the antenatal period, thrice during the postnatal period, and twice during the motherhood and childhood periods. The outcomes will be participants' health checkup coverage, gestational and neonatal complication rates, complementary feeding rates, and health-seeking behaviors. We will use a multilevel logistic regression and a generalized estimating equation to evaluate the intervention's effectiveness.

Results: Recruitment began in June 2020. As of June 2022, we have consented 295 mothers in the study. Data collection is expected to conclude in June 2024.

Conclusions: Our new trial will show the effectiveness and extent of using a telehealth care system to ensure an appropriate continuum of care in maternal, newborn, and child health (from the antenatal period to the motherhood and childhood periods) and improve women's and infants' health status.

Trial registration: ISRCTN Registry ISRCTN44966621; https://www.isrctn.com/ISRCTN44966621.

International registered report identifier (irrid): DERR1-10.2196/41586.

Keywords: continuum of care; maternal, newborn, and child health; parenting; pediatrics; portable health clinic; prenatal; telehealth care.

©Kimiyo Kikuchi, Rafiqul Islam, Yoko Sato, Mariko Nishikitani, Rieko Izukura, Nusrat Jahan, Fumihiko Yokota, Subaru Ikeda, Nazneen Sultana, Meherun Nessa, Morshed Nasir, Ashir Ahmed, Kiyoko Kato, Seiichi Morokuma, Naoki Nakashima. Originally published in JMIR Research Protocols (https://www.researchprotocols.org), 15.12.2022.