DEVELOPMENT OF MULTIMEDIA APPLICATION FOR TRAINERS IN MATERNAL HEALTH CARE DELIVERY IN ONDO STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

Maternal care for a mother starts from the day a woman is pregnant to postnatal. Part of the care entails giving necessary information and instruction on the pregnancy for her wellbeing; and also guiding her about necessary family planning after delivery. Many tools (as instructional aid) can help the medical trainers in this antenatal and postnatal engagements. Often times, materials used, Posters and Flyers for the prenatal and puerperal activities are obsolete and their contents fading off; as a result could not serve again the purpose it was primarily created for. Besides, to promote the sustainable development goal on quality health, World Health Organisation advocated that people need to be informed; but how are they going to be reached? This is a major question that culminated into the development of multimedia application for maternal health care delivery; focusing on Ondo State, Nigeria. To achieve this main aim of the research, mixed method approach was adopted: qualitatively and quantitatively. The experimental study authored a multimedia application – ‘Mother’s e-Guide’ in three variants: Android, Web, and Multimedia Title (Windows) for information and instructional purposes. The study discovered that ‘Print’ is widely used as instructional material and for other antenatal and postnatal activities. Therefore Paper-based system still retains its relevance in archiving and documentation while digital platform is greatly under-utilised for instructional aid. Meanwhile, usability evaluation by the medical professionals using the authored application comparatively with the Prints proved the Multimedia application to be better than the Paper-based system in terms of accessibility, compactness, interactivity and social networking for health solutions. In addition, quality care maternally is beyond genuine data collation and contact between pregnant mothers and their health care providers. Thus, the research suggests that government should adequately fund and equip the health sector, design and technological fields. Also, digital multimedia is best deployed nonlinearly for effective user experience while health contents with local touch is important in application development.