USABILITY ANALYSIS OF SMS ALERT SYSTEM FOR IMMUNIZATION IN THE CONTEXT OF BANGLADESH

Touhid Bhuiyan, Imran Mahmud, Banassri Alam

Abstract: Both the market and academia strongly encourage the development of usable systems, and they do so by relying on a number of standards, guide-lines, research and good practice streams. Unfortunately, in the health sector, whilst being the owner of standards under many purposes and topics, seems still falling and running behind as the conceptual issues and practical implications of usability are concerned. In this study, it was found that rapid growth of mobile applications through SMS increases in a significant way in developing countries particularly in Bangladesh. Public satisfaction was highly shown in mobile health services through SMS. In our paper, usability has been analytically investigated throughout a simulated health oriented action setting and against a prototype of SMS based health services in Bangladesh, and several provoking conclusions in terms of “rethinking usability” applied to academic actions and decision making have been derived. Various health institutes can be influenced by this study to challenge existing difficulties against usability potential.

Keywords: ICT, mHealth, Mobile applications, SMS, Usability

DOI: https://doi.org/10.15623/ijret.2013.0211046