Assessing costs of developing a digital program for training community health workers to deliver treatment for depression: A case study in rural India.

• Total costs for developing the digital training program was 208,814 USD, with 61% for salary and benefits of the personnel involved in development. • This paper contributes towards India's experience to the WHO's guideline on monitoring and evaluating digital health interventions. • Policymakers or implementers considering adoption of digital training program within their respective settings can use this information as a reference point. • We propose survey instruments and checklist for collecting and reporting development costs of the digital training program. • We also recommend standardizing cost reporting practice for developing digital health interventions. Digital technology has emerged as a promising approach for training and building capacity of community health workers in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs). Little is known about the cost of developing digital training programs in LMICs, which hinders the adoption, implementation, and scaling up of the programs in routine primary care settings. This study assessed the costs of developing a digital program for training community health workers to deliver a psychological treatment for depression in a rural district of Madhya Pradesh, India. We developed survey instruments to document required resources in development, including involved personnel (their roles, responsibilities, time spent, and salaries or payments), information technologies (e.g. , smartphones, software programs), and infrastructure-related costs (e.g. , vehicle, office space, utilities). Costs were estimated from an accounting perspective. Over a 10-month developmental period, the total costs were 208,814 USD, with the largest portion on human resources (61%, with 14% on management and supervision), followed by information technologies (33%), and infrastructure-related costs (6%). These findings could inform policymakers in LMICs on costs of developing online-training programs, which will be especially useful during the COVID-19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]