“Using smartphones is cheaper and more effective than using paper surveys to monitor diseases in the developing world, according to a new study by Kenyan researchers with the [CDC] … presented Monday at the International Conference on Emerging Infectious Diseases in Atlanta,” the International Business Times reports. “The study compared 1,019 paper-based questionnaires to 1,019 smartphone questionnaires collected at four sample sites for influenza surveillance in Kenya,” the news service notes (3/12).

“‘Collecting data using smartphones has improved the quality of our data and given us a faster turnaround time to work with it,’ said Henry Njuguna, sentinel surveillance coordinator at [CDC] Kenya. ‘It also helped us save on the use of paper and other limited resources,'” India’s Economic Times writes (3/12). “For two years, the cost of establishing and running a paper-based data collection system was approximately $61,830 compared to approximately $45,546 for a smartphone data collection system,” according to a CDC press release (3/12).