Utilizing mobile health and community informants to collect real-time health care data in extremely low resource environments.

Background: Mobile health provides promising opportunities to perform population surveillance in rural, impoverished, or unstable communities. The objective of this study was to test the efficacy and accuracy of data collected by community informants in extreme low-resource environments using electronic surveys and mobile phones.

Methods: We carried out a population-based, cross-sectional survey between October and November 2017 measuring access to health care and prenatal services for pregnant women in the Northern Region of Malawi.