Community Care Hub / Community Health Nurse (CHN)-on-the-Go

Ghana’s frontline health workers, Community Health Nurses (CHNs), are key to averting maternal, newborn and child deaths in rural areas. But they face many challenges including traveling far distances to visit patients, feeling isolated in remote areas, and having limited access to important health information, supervision and professional development opportunities.

CHN-on-the-Go is a smartphone application that uses technology to improve health knowledge, career development, and connectedness for government health workers stationed in rural Ghana. The app provides CHNs with decision-making support in caregiving, mobile courses to improve their knowledge, and visual aids to engage patients and families. Nurses also use it in conjunction with WhatsApp to communicate with their peers and supervisors, and share pictures and questions for immediate troubleshooting around care delivery. A linked Supervisor app allows supervisors to more closely monitor the nurses’ progress.

The CCH team is in the process of handing over the program (the 'CHN-on-the-Go' app and linked Supervisor app) to Ghana Health Service (GHS) for management and support. All districts have successfully carried out their community engagement activities. In most districts, community durbars were organised and CCH activities were integrated with other community activities such as handwashing, nutrition education, and others. Most nurses have enrolled in the E-Learning platform, have passed in at least one-three subjects, and have gone through the Knowledge, Skills and Assessment test with their supervisors and received accreditation. The supervisor app is complete, and it provides better and more usable content and more control to the supervisors, allowing them to better manage and support CHNs. Further, the Ghana Heath Service, in partnership with UNICEF, is planning to integrate components of CHN-on-the-Go into its E-Tracker through a pilot program in one region of Ghana. Nurses have reported being satisfied with the application citing that it has made their work easier by connecting them to colleagues and supervisors, allowing them to access information more easily, minimizing their workloads, and reducing travel time. The learning courses and diagnostic support have been the most commonly used parts of the app, along with WhatsApp. Supervisors are using the supervisor app to monitor the nurses’ work and offer face-to-face or phone feedback.