Empowering Community Health Workers With Scripted Medicine: Design Science Research Study

Background: The World Health Organization anticipates a shortage of 14 million health workers by 2030, particularly affecting the Global South. Community health workers (CHWs) may mitigate the shortages of professional health care workers. Recent studies have explored the feasibility and effectiveness of shifting noncommunicable disease (NCD) services to CHWs. Challenges, such as high attrition rates and variable performance, persist due to inadequate organizational support and could hamper such efforts. Research on employee empowerment highlights how organizational structures affect employees’ perception of empowerment and retention. Objective: This study aims to develop Scripted Medicine to empower CHWs to accept broader responsibilities in NCD care. It aims to convey relevant medical and counseling knowledge through medical algorithms and ThinkLets (ie, social scripts). Collaboration engineering research offers insights that could help address the structural issues in community-based health care and facilitate task shifting. Methods: This study followed a design science research approach to implement a mobile health–supported, community-based intervention in 2 districts of Lesotho. We first developed the medical algorithms and ThinkLets based on insights from collaboration engineering and algorithmic management literature. We then evaluated the designed approach in a field study in the ComBaCaL (Community Based Chronic Disease Care Lesotho) project. The field study included 10 newly recruited CHWs and spanned over 2 weeks of training and 12 weeks of field experience. Following an abductive approach, we analyzed surveys, interviews, and observations to study how Scripted Medicine empowers CHWs to accept broader responsibilities in NCD care. Results: Scripted Medicine successfully conveyed the required medical and counseling knowledge through medical algorithms and ThinkLets. We found that medical algorithms predominantly influenced CHWs’ perception of structural empowerment, while ThinkLets affected their psychological empowerment. The different perceptions between the groups of CHWs from the 2 districts highlighted the importance of considering the cultural and economic context. Conclusions: We propose Scripted Medicine as a novel approach to CHW empowerment inspired by collaboration engineering and algorithmic management. Scripted Medicine broadens the perspective on mobile health–supported, community-based health care. It emphasizes the need to script not only essential medical knowledge but also script counseling expertise. These scripts allow CHWs to embed medical knowledge into the social interactions in community-based health care. Scripted Medicine empowers CHW to accept broader responsibilities to address the imminent shortage of medical professionals in the Global South.