See my work: sustaining a data reporting practice by mental health clinicians in Liberia

Working with the Carter Center, we have developed and sustained software and training to enable data reporting at the patient level by mental health clinicians in Liberia. Over a four year time period, more than 140 clinicians have been trained in the use of the data reporting software, and more than 3000 valid reports have uploaded to the cloud. This participation has persisted despite significant technology challenges and little data feedback to clinicians. Because so many ICTD interventions fail, we were interested in the factors that contributed to sustaining the human and technology infrastructure to enable data reporting over this fairly long time period. We focus on motivations to participate and find support for positive motivations such as clinician pride. We find that being seen to do health work, not just doing the work, plays a critical role in motivation. We describe and critically analyze a novel approach to sustaining the technology, using student teams in a class. We assess project success through two lenses provided by the literature, first on characterization of project success and failure factors, and then on project champions.