Clinical Research Directory

VectorCAM: A Digital Innovation to Advance Entomological Surveillance

Mosquitoes spread diseases such as malaria, but tracking mosquito populations is often slow and depends on a small number of highly trained specialists. VectorCam is a smartphone-based tool that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to help identify mosquitoes from photographs and automatically report surveillance information. In this study, community health workers in Uganda used VectorCam during routine mosquito collection activities, while a comparison group followed standard methods that required mosquito identification by trained specialists using microscopes. The study evaluated how accurately mosquitoes could be identified, how quickly information could be reported, how complete the collected data were, and how easy the system was to use. The goal was to determine whether AI-enabled technology could help communities collect and share mosquito surveillance information more quickly and efficiently, while maintaining data quality under real-world conditions.