At present, we are tracking pneumonia, sepsis and meningitis primarily since those were the parameters of our study but other diseases may be included.

We are tracking the events during the first 2 years of a child's life. Pneumonia is considered one of the leading causes of death among infants and children under the age of 5 in Pakistan. This study proposes to follow the children through the first 18 months of their life to see if they contract pneumonia during that time. We are trying to isolate a particular strain of pneumonia (streptococcus pneumonia) so as to lay a foundation for a vaccine trial which will follow this study. The child who meets our age criteria is enrolled in the study and given the RFID bracelet at a participating vaccination center. This RFID will be used to track the child during the study period and the IDs assigned to these bracelets are automatically managed at the server end.

From this point onwards, whenever the mother takes the child to a participating general practitioners clinic, a partner hospital or a follow up visit at the vaccination center, the RFID is scanned using the Nokia 6131 phones which Nokia was generous enough to donate to us. This scan reads the patient ID and prompts the field worker or the clinician to select from a menu option and submit the data to our server application via GRPS where it's stored in a database.

When the server receives the data it also generates a SMS message and dispatches that to a mobile team standing by to respond to these events. The mobile team consists of a surveillance medical officer and a phlebotomist who then uses the information contained in the SMS to go to the clinics and provide further assistance to the patient. For instance the patient might require blood tests, x-rays or hospitalization and our team handles this and links the test IDs with the patient ID using the same phone based system. All this data can be viewed by our team in real time though a secure web interface so that we can keep track of the patient's progress. By using these phones and RFID, we are able to provide a low cost location independent solution.

Using RFID tags in combination with RFID capable mobile phone offer immense advantages over a barcode system. With our current setup, we can issue, reissue and deactivate tags at different locations if we so choose, without requiring printer hookups. RFID tags also take up a smaller surface area, especially the button tags we use and these tags can be easily integrated in the bracelet. Since they are washable, the bracelet can remain on the child's wrist and has a lower probability of getting lost. Barcodes would have had to be printed on cards and mothers forgetting the cards at home would become a more common phenomenon.