Disease surveillance is an important aspect of any public health program that serves two essential purposes, one of which is the early detection of outbreaks to initiate investigative and control measures, and the other is for monitoring the progress of ongoing medical interventions for disease reduction. Disease Surveillance is also a basic tool for the field epidemiologist as surveillance data provide a scientific basis for implementation of an appropriate health-care policy, disease control decisions, the evaluation of the efficacy of surveillance initiatives, and for the allocation of resources in the primary health-care system.

Mobile technologies can play a critical role in assisting health-care providers in delivering timely medical response to local clusters of disease and in containing the outbreaks. A wireless-enabled mobile device provides the ideal platform for collection of data in the field which is accurate and validated, and then for transmitting it to a centralized location for analysis and feedback in real-time. It empowers the field health-worker to travel to remote areas for data collection and report information in real-time to help the epidemiological community increase health coverage to underserved remote communities.

Our objective is to develop a generic forms-based solution for the collection of data on diseases under surveillance, in an effort to reduce response times, reduce transaction costs and improve health coverage through the use of cost-effective mobile devices.