A new TB screening solution to change how TB patients are referred for testing. CAGE-TB aims to develop a universal smartphone-based app specifically to detect TB in a cough sound with African patients and health systems in mind. A cough smartphone app can save time in health centres and prevent unnecessary TB testing burden in the health system.
1) What if a person could cough into a smartphone app and gets a recommendation to either directly access TB or general health care?
2) What if this could be done either in the comfort of their home or at their local clinic?
3)What if your smartphone app could help make your clinic appointment, remind you of the appointments and save you time?
1) Refine the cough audio signature. We have a TB cough signature from pilot trials. Next is a large field trial on clinic patients in a high TB-HIV setting in South Africa to see how specific the TB cough detection algorithm is for TB with our engineering team emphasising easy cough sound smartphone recording and processing particularly for African clinic settings where internet and electricity shortages are common.
2) Validate the final cough audio signature. The field trial will be expanded using the confirmed cough signature algorithm in both Uganda and South Africa to see how well the cough signature applies to other high-burden African populations
3) The app interface will be improved to make smartphone app user-friendly and accessible in local languages by experienced members of the UGOE team who have a track record of developing health smartphone apps for African health systems.
4) A costing analysis will be done to establish how much CAGE-TB’s cough triage smartphone app can reduce health system costs compared to current system.
5) Interviews with patients, healthcare workers, and key local TB programme managers will be done to find out how to best implement the CAGE-TB app to satisfy user needs and be taken up by health systems.