Cost and implementation analysis of a personal digital assistant system for laboratory data collection.

Setting: One hundred and twenty-six public health centers and laboratories in Lima, Peru, without internet.

Background: We have previously shown that a personal digital assistant (PDA) based system reduces data collection delays and errors for tuberculosis (TB) laboratory results when compared to a paper system.

Objective: To assess the data collection efficiency of each system and the resources required to develop, implement and transfer the PDA-based system to a resource-poor setting.

Design: Time-motion study of data collectors using the PDA-based and paper systems. Cost analysis of developing, implementing and transferring the PDA-based system to a local organization and their redeployment of the system.

Results: Work hours spent collecting and processing results decreased by 60% (P < 0.001). Users perceived this decrease to be 70% and had no technical problems they failed to fix. The total cost and time to develop and implement the intervention was US$26092 and 22 weeks. The cost to extend the system to cover nine more districts was $1125 and to implement collecting patient weights was $4107.

Conclusion: A PDA-based system drastically reduced the effort required to collect TB laboratory results from remote locations. With the framework described, open-source software and local development, organizations in resource-poor settings could reap the benefits of this technology.