Browsing by Author "Sevilla, Joseph (Dr.)"

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    Accessing maternal healthcare information using a mobile application
    (Strathmore University, 2012-10) Kioko, Shadrack; Sevilla, Joseph (Dr.); Marwanga, Reuben (Dr.); Kiraka, Ruth (Prof.)
    The ubiquity and penetration of mobile phones in Sub-Saharan Africa presents the opportunity to leverage maternal care information provision in both prenatal and postnatal cases. The slow progress and funding constraints in attaining the Millennium Development Goals for child and maternal health encourage harnessing innovative measures, such as mHealth, to address these public health priorities. Mobile health (mHealth) encompasses the use of mobile telecommunication and multimedia into increasingly mobile and wireless health care delivery systems and has the potential to improve tens of thousands of lives each year. Being pregnant can be very challenging to mothers especially if they are expecting for the first time. In Kenya, many women rely on information that is down from one to another which may not be accurate as experience from each pregnancy can be different from one pregnancy to the other and from one person to another. Matters are made worse when information past down is mixed with cultural taboo. The aim of this research was to determine the challenges expectant women face when accessing maternal healthcare information in Kenya, to determine the current sources of the information and their limitations, determine the design requirements, the best mobile platform to develop the mobile application on and lastly to develop and test the mobile application. The findings of this research show that only a few expectant women currently access information from Internet sources. In developed countries, mobile phones are widely used to provide maternal healthcare information through mobile applications, SMS. In Kenya, few women use mobile and Internet to access this information because they rely on books, stories and doctors information which they receive rarely. The research established that mHealth has a great potential in increasing access to maternal information in developing countries. LEA, a Java based mobile application, was developed to provide maternal healthcare information to expectant women. It represents a proof of concept that mobile applications lead to sustainable prenatal and neonatal mHealth services.
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    Issues and challenges in implementing quality assurance in higher education – Strathmore University case
    Muchira-Gatei, C.N.; Sevilla, Joseph (Dr.)
    This paper deals with the issues and challenges facing the successful implementation of a QMS in an educational institution, namely, Strathmore University. It looks at the various steps followed to implement QMS in the University. Strathmore University (SU) decided to implement a quality assurance system in early 2003 to ensure excellence in the pursuit of its objectives. In the development of her strategic plan, the University identified the need to institute a QMS to ensure adherence to quality along the expansion path. It was a means of entrenching a systematic approach to quality management in both its administrative and academic functions. Ideally, the QMS should guarantee adherence to the University’s processes and procedures. The process of QMS entails various steps including the decision to implement quality assurance, making of quality related choices, educating staff, constituting the implementation team, defining statements, policies and processes, documentation, internal audit training and the audit process, certification and QMS monitoring and growth. The paper discusses the various challenges encountered in the steps of the QMS process. It further looks at positive and negative aspects of each step as well as the measures taken to overcome them. In conclusion, an understanding of the issues and challenges at each step of QMS implementations allows for suitable preventive and correcting actions to achieve optimal performance over time. Our conclusion would be of high interest to other local and regional universities who have decided to implement a QMS.