Page 137 - ITU-T Focus Group Digital Financial Services – Executive Summary

This pilot project proved that ICTs platforms can serve as a powerful tools to reduce the disparities in health
care and awareness on HIV especially among the young populations, which will not only increase their life
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span but also improve their quality of life, making them less prone to HIV related infections.

3 Conclusions

The application of the HITSystem in the public health system in Kenya has provided evidence that an efficient
e-health system can indeed be implemented in low-resource settings. Hence, the HITSystem shows immense
potential to be utilized in other HIV infected developing countries to promote regulation and treatment of
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the disease.
One of the key lessons learnt through implementation of the HITSystem in Kenya was that ICTs can be
efficiently adapted through e-health innovations in response to emerging requirements of the region and in
keeping with technology evolution and availability.

Partners of this pilot project are also working to expand the HITS in order to support antenatal prevention of
maternal-to-child transmission and integrate prenatal and postnatal services for HIV infected women and
children. If this is successful, it is expected to directly impact the perinatal transmission of HIV, which is
expected to help minimize exposure of children to HIV.
However, the major challenges observed while implementing the HITSystem (as with other HIV management
systems which use ICTs) were that of privacy and trust. As such globally, HIV management systems like
HITSystem seem to have diminished geographic coverage and mostly are being piloted on small size samples
with limited use of technical innovations. There are still several gaps pertaining to tracking treatment across
countries and continents in case patients are to travel temporarily or migrate to other regions. In such cases,
it would be required to implements HITSystem or similar (interoperable) ICT-based HIV management systems
to ensure that consistent treatment is given to HIV infected children.

The factors of trust and privacy along with limited implementation, may significantly affect the adoption rate
of such HIV management systems across other regions of the world. If guardians or parents are unsure of
how the data from the HITSystem will be utilized and protected, they may be hesitant to enrol their children.
In general, ICT-based HIV management systems like HITSystem have defined guidelines for anonymization of
the data collected, however, the parents from lower income families may be unaware of these guidelines
and other could also be wary of how the information sharing between the different stakeholders within the
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HITSystem could affect their children’s privacy.
Despite certain shortcomings, the HITSystem pilot project has set an ideal framework for e-health
management of HIV, which can be built on in the coming years. The pilot project has also shown promising
results within a short timeframe. Nevertheless, it should be acknowledged that the use of ICTs in HIV
interventions is still an emerging field. Therefore, further research is required to promote technical
innovations and implement interactive features in ICT-based HIV management programs, which can have a
wider geographical scope, defined privacy and security guidelines as well as utilize more of the available
technologies. Future research may also be needed to explore the feasibility of applying ICT platforms in HIV
management programs that serve populations from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds and ethnicities.

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41 Uses of information and communication technologies in HIV self-management: A systematic review of global
literature. International Journal of Information Management,75-83. 2017.
42 S. Finocchario-Kessler, I. Odera, V. Okoth, C. Bawcom, B. Gautney, S. Khamadi, K. Clark, K. Goggin. Lessons learned
from implementing the HIV infant tracking system (HITSystem): A web-based intervention to improve early infant
diagnosis in Kenya. 2015.
43 Zhang.Y, Li.X. Uses of information and communication technologies in HIV self-management: A systematic review of
global literature. International Journal of Information Management,75-83. January 2017.

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