Lack of funding

Trachomatous inflammation-follicular (TF) is diagnosed by looking for clinical signs of infection of everted eyelids (conjunctivae) of children.

The overall objective of this project is to develop a smartphone application and assess its acceptability and feasibility.

Fieldwork will take place during routine Tropical Data trainings and population-based prevalence surveys supported by Tropical Data.

Healthy adult volunteers in London will have photos of their conjunctivae taken to develop the app initially, with iterative improvements to the app based on image quality achieved. For fieldwork, images of the conjunctivae of children will be have photos of their conjunctivae taken with a digital single lens reflex (DSLR) camera and the newly developed smartphone app. Grading of the photos will be compared with field grading, to compare grading agreement, to assess utility for supervision, quality assurance and training purposes.

The investigators want to see whether it would be possible to take photos using Android smartphones, routinely used in trachoma surveys for collecting data, for quality assurance, supervision and training purposes. The investigators will develop an app in the United Kingdom (UK) by taking photos of the conjunctivae of healthy adult volunteers to iteratively improve the quality of images based on the image metadata and review by trachoma experts. The app will then be field tested, and trachoma grading based on the app photos, DSLR photos, and clinical grading, compared. Any management (treatment) will be based on routine clinical diagnosis only - the images are for research purposes only. The investigators will also ask participants for their views on acceptability of having photos of conjunctivae taken with the phone, and conduct a cost-consequences analysis of potential implementation of the app in routine trachoma surveys.

Objectives and approach:

2.1 To develop a mobile phone application to capture images of everted eyelids (conjunctivae) of children being examined as part of the Tropical Data field inter-grader agreement (IGA) test, or sampled as part of trachoma prevalence surveys.

2.2 To evaluate the quality of the mobile phone application images compared with field grading and DSLR images.

2.3 To assess the acceptability and feasibility of a mobile phone application for photographing everted eyelids (conjunctivae) from children being examined as part of the Tropical Data IGA test, or sampled as part of trachoma prevalence surveys.

2.4 To conduct a cost-consequences analysis of setting up an infrastructure for capturing and transmitting images in order to make the system economically viable.

Inclusion Criteria:

Objectives 2.1 and 2.2:

• For the London-based app development, any eligible healthy adult who provides written informed consent will be eligible.
• For the field-based app development, any child aged 1-9 years being examined as part of the Tropical Data IGA test, or sampled as part of trachoma prevalence surveys, and for whom written informed consent has been provided by a guardian, will be eligible.

Objective 2.3:

• All Tropical Data trainers and trainees attending the Tropical Data (initial and refresher) training events and who provide written informed consent, will be eligible.
• Community leaders and children's guardians who provide written informed consent will be eligible.

Exclusion Criteria:

• For each of the objectives, if the inclusion criteria are not fulfilled, the participant will not be eligible to participate.

Anonymised data will be shared with relevant study team members for the purposes of data analysis. Data Transfer Agreements will be completed, where appropriate.

Data will be shared with team members as they are collected.

Data access requests from outside the study team for the specified data analyses will be reviewed by the Principal Investigator. Requestors will be required to sign a Data Access Agreement.