Development and evaluation of a user friendly android application for advocacy of “Organ Donation” among residents of Western Rajasthan, 2022

Abstract

Introduction: Organ donation is either when a person allows healthy transplantable organs/tissues to be removed after death, or when the donor is alive. Digitization in various aspects of healthcare is replacing humans, eliminating biases and judgement errors. The use of an android application reduces subjectivity in need assessment, accessing basic information and contacting the right facilities to register for organ donation. Objectives: To develop an android application to increase awareness among participants. To assess knowledge, attitudes and practices related to organ donation through the application. To evaluate satisfaction levels regarding the android application. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 384 participants of urban and rural areas of Pali district over four months. A predesigned pretested questionnaire was used for data collection by trained volunteers and analyzed using Epi info (version 7.2). Results: The study was conducted among 192 urban and 192 rural participants of Pali district whose average age was 27.5 years in urban and 24 years respectively ,60.2% were females ,29.2% were married, 96% belonged to Hindu religion and 43% were medical students .Although 82.8% of the participants had heard about organ donation only 17.2% had pledged to donate organs. The rural and urban differences were marked stating religion as a determinant of their attitude for organ donation (p-value 0.009), that infants and elders could not donate organs (p-value 0.014), that organ donation was costly (p -value 0.00), that doctors should not advocate organ donation (p-value 0.014). The median agreement was above 5 on the Likert’s scale regarding the application being better than print media, increasing insight to organ donation and giving a sense of social responsibility. Conclusions: Awareness about organ donation is marred by myths, but the community had a positive attitude to use the application for increasing awareness levels.