Lutfi Agus Salim, SKM., M.Si. who is a lecturer at Faculty of Public Health, Airlangga University, succeeded to earn doctoral degree from Faculty of Medicine UGM on Wednesday (11/10) after developing an application for fertility information system named as Smart Fert that can be used as a fertility measurement tool which is valid, practical, and easy to be implemented.
According to Lutfi, fertility is one of the main indicators in developing demography sector, particularly controlling the population quantity. In line with the implementation of regional autonomy, demography becomes one of the regional government authority while the availability of fertility indicator still becomes an obstacle for the government.
Although various fertility calculation methods have been found by many demographic experts and institutions, in the regional level, those methods are still less applicative to be implemented in the field due to limitation of application, data, method, and workforce’s capability.
Smart Fert application is based on visual basic language, excel software to validate direct method calculation and SPSS program to evaluate the suitability of Smart Fert data with Indonesian Statistic Center Agency.
Based on his research regarding t-test method to differentiate Total Fertility Rate (TFR), General Fertility Rate (GFR), and Crude Birth Rate (CBR) using Smart Fert with TFR, GFR, and CBR on 38 cities in East Java based on Statistic Center Agency data resulted in no significant difference. Moreover, this application is valid after being tested by comparing the application data with the data from Statistic Center Agency in 2010. “Therefore, this application can be used to calculate the fertility indicator every year in many regions in Indonesia,” said Lutfi in his open examination for the doctoral programme.
He emphasizes that the application is able to calculate the fertility indicator which is valid, practical, and easy to be implemented corresponding to the available input. However, it requires a sustainable fertility technique training in the regional level, both in the short period and longer period in the regional autonomy era.
“The existence of this application is expected to help the field officers,” he added.