Home Institution: St John’s National Academy of Health Sciences, Bengaluru, India

Host institution in Africa: Makerere University Lung Institute, Uganda

Rashmi Rodrigues is an Associate Professor in Community Medicine at St John’s National Academy of Health Sciences, Bangalore and is an affiliated Researcher at Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. Her research focuses on developing mobile technologies to support adherence to treatment in people living with HIV/AIDS and Tuberculosis (TB). For this she has developed a mobile application – v.Cure, via which patients with TB video record themselves consuming their medications. The video is sent to the healthcare provider who provides the patient with feedback regarding their adherence to treatment. Rashmi is a mentor in USAIDs Partnerships for Enhanced Engagement in Research (PEER), Women in Science, mentoring program cohort of 2020, which focuses on TB. Her research interests include developing health systems for improving outcomes in infectious diseases, including outcomes in populations that are underserved and hard to reach.

Project: Contextualising mobile phone applications for treatment support to Africa - Adherence and retention in care of patients with drug-resistant TB: The proposed work under AIMF involves developing a sustainable collaboration with Makerere University Lung Institute, Kampala, Uganda through her collaborator Dr. Winceslaus Katagira. Rashmi during her visit to Uganda will explore patient perceptions regarding the use of mobile technology for monitoring treatment adherence in patients with drug resistant TB and their healthcare providers. The work will provide guide modifications to the existing v.Cure mobile application that she has developed (currently used to monitor patients with TB in India using mobile video technology) for implementation in Uganda. The modifications to the v.Cure application will be contextually relevant to Uganda and will be supplemented by Dr. Katagira’s visit to St. John’s National Academy of Health Sciences, Bangalore, India. The collaboration will also enable transfer of knowledge, skill and technology between the two institutions involved in the collaboration.