Improving TB Surveillance and Patients' Quality of Care Through Improved Data Collection in Angola: Development of an Electronic Medical Record System in Two Health Facilities of Luanda

Frontiers in Public Health

article

Claudia Robbiati¹  Maria Elena Tosti²  Giampaolo Mezzabotta¹  Francesca Dal Maso³  Ofélia M. Lulua Sachicola⁴  Paulo Siene Tienabe⁴  Joseph Nsuka⁴  Marco Simonelli²  Maria Grazia Dente²  Giovanni Putoto¹ 

[1] Doctors With Africa CUAMM;National Center for Global Health, National Institute of Health;Independent Researcher;Ministry of Health of Angola

关键词: TB;    surveillance;    Angola;    Electronic Medical Record (EMR);    quality;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpubh.2022.745928

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

TB Programs should promote the use of digital health platforms, like Electronic Medical Records (EMR) to collect patients' information, thus reducing data incompleteness and low accuracy and eventually improving patients' care. Nevertheless, the potential of digital health systems remains largely unexploited in low-resource settings. Angola is one of the 14 countries with a triple burden of TB, TB/HIV and MDR-TB (multidrug-resistant TB) and it is among the three countries, together with Congo and Liberia that have never completed a drug-resistance survey so far. The Sanatorium Hospital of Luanda and the Tuberculosis Dispensary of Luanda are the two reference health facilities in Luanda dealing with most of the TB cases, and they both rely entirely on paper-based data collection. The aim of this paper is to describe a three-stage process for the development of a TB EMR system in these two health facilities of Luanda and to share the lessons learned. The description is focused on the activities that took place from March 2019 to January 2020. Main lessons learned were identified in the importance of engaging all the stakeholders in the development process, in the mainstream of the “think digital” transition, in the promotion of a monitoring and evaluation (M&E) culture and in the planning of the system's sustainability. This approach may be replicated in similar contexts where the development of a TB EMR system is sought, and the lessons learned could assist and facilitate the programming of the interventions.

【 授权许可】

CC BY