Madeira Mosquito Surveillance App (MMSA): Leveraging Mobile Phone Apps for Enhanced Mosquito Surveillance

Mosquito surveillance is crucial for understanding the dynamics of mosquito populations, the implementation of public health programme aimed at controlling and preventing the spread of mosquito-borne diseases such as zika, chikungunya and dengue. Environmental surveillance agents, tasked with conducting routine entomological surveys in regions burdened with infective mosquitoes play an essential role in vector surveillance. Digital intervention, through mobile phone technology, offers the potential to augment mosquito surveillance efforts by overcoming the limitations inherent in traditional paper-based data collection methods. This public health informatics study introduces a multi-profile mobile application designed to enhance the process of data collection from mosquito ovitraps, ensure timely reporting, and improve field worker performance in Madeira Island, with an emphasis on user-centred design. The application seeks to boost operational efficiency for field agents and to streamline decision-making processes for health authorities. It explores the technical design, user experience, and architecture, alongside the challenges faced during implementation, including logistical hurdles during adaptation. Crucially, this research considers the varied on-groundchallenges encountered by agents, such as fears of data loss or errors in entry, which add complexity to the digital transition. The transition to a digitised data collection system is poised to have a significant impact which could facilitate the timely use of predictive analytical models to forecast mosquito population dynamics, enabling the early detection of hotspots. This, in turn, would allow fieldworker agents to be alerted to immediate action and direct their efforts to high-risk areas, significantly improving the efficiency of interventions against mosquito-borne diseases.