Information & Communication Technology (ICT) for Health

This is a critical time in the global dialogue about "eHealth" and health information technologies. Investing in efficient, accessible, and cost-effective information and communication technology (ICT) tools can help to improve health outcomes and prevent diseases in low-resource settings. SSI is in a unique position to make valuable contributions in this field because of our previous experience, our current use of ICT, and our network of institutions, organizations and government entities who we partner with around the world.

Beginning in 2004 in our Nicaragua office, ICTs provided support for information management in the Pediatric Dengue Vaccine Initiative project (PDVI). Since then, we've worked in collaboration with the Epidemiology and Surveillance Branch of the national Ministry of Health at multiple levels -- the Managua regional public health clinic-based system (SILAIS-Managua), the National Infectious Disease Diagnostics and Reference Laboratory Center (CNDR), as well as public-sector hospitals and clinics -- to develop, test and implement various low-cost ICT programs and tools, including:

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology to map individual patients/study participants addresses using geospatial reference data to allow for easier home-visit follow-ups during both annual disease surveillance sampling, the annual vaccination campaign, and high-risk pregnancy check-ups
"mHealth" (mobile health) tools originally PDAs (and now cell phones) for paperless data entry and patient and biological specimen verification/tracking in the field (using unique identification numbers and barcode printing/scanning)
In-clinic patient identification systems (including fingerprint scanning) that are linked to electronic medical record databases, allowing for more streamlined access to clinical history and patient information
Low-cost communication systems (Skype, handheld radios) for improved communication between the various team members and sites involved with the clinical, laboratory and epidemiological studies
Electronic document back-up (digital scanning) of all paper records for quality control purposes
Data management systems with independent, but linkable, database modules for information access and control by multiple end-users.

Several of these tools are now being scaled up by our informatics team in collaboration with the Ministry of Health to facilitate 1) the streamlining of the national immunization system, 2) the tracking of prenatal visits for high-risk pregnancies, 3) the monitoring of chronic diseases, and 4) the development of a laboratory information management system for more reliable biological sample tracking and processing. In early 2009 we began to work with the open-source software program, OpenMRS (Open Medical Record System), with partners in Managua, Nicaragua. Our team will also begin testing out cell-phone based mHealth tools with support from the OpenROSA consortium in our "eHealth Solutions Laboratory" there. These kinds of eHealth solutions have the potential to improve health outcomes and greatly reduce cost and infrastructure barriers that present significant challenges in resource-limited settings.

To read more about our work, see:

For more information, contact:

Heather Zornetzer, Program Coordinator -- hzornetzer [at] gmail [dot] com
William Avilés, Director of Informatics -- wravmon [at] yahoo [dot] com