An investigation into digital vaccination records for minors in Gauteng, South Africa

Abstract

The design and development of “e-Vaccination” applications are not extensively researched within developing economies, in part because of the difficulty in gaining access to government officials and medical experts. Vaccination cards have been used to keep track of minors’ immunisation records in South Africa for over 30 years. The South African government is moving towards the use of electronic systems for the storage of such information. South Africa has a clearly defined electronic health strategy, which is to utilise information and communications technologies in healthcare to inter alia, engage in medical research, promote health education, monitoring of diseases and tracking public health. Supporting this strategy means digitising current paper-based systems. The result would be information that can be stored safely, backed up and analysed more easily than paper-based journals, documents and vaccination cards. The purpose of this research is to develop a better understanding of key stakeholders’ perceptions to the replacement of paper-based vaccination cards with an electronic system. This is important because digital records can be considered as a more effective method of storing vaccination data. This study is quantitative in nature and primary data in the form of Likert scale questionnaires were collected from 118 key stakeholders being nurses, doctors, parents and school administration staff. The Likert scale questionnaire data was analysed using the following statistical techniques: Cronbach Alpha Test, Chi-Square Test, Analysis of Variance Test and Principle Component Analysis. The analysis provided a deeper understanding of the key stakeholder’s perceptions to the use of e-Vaccination applications. e-Vaccination applications are affected by user friendliness of the application, the graphical design of the application, practicality of the application, user experience of the application as well as the usability of the application. The practical implications of this research on e-Vaccination applications is that designers, developers, policymakers and government have a deeper understanding of nurses, doctors, parents and school administration staff perceptions to the use of e-Vaccination.