The IASTED African Conference on
Health Informatics
AfricaHI 2010

Science and Technology Applications for Health and Sustainable Development

September 6 – 8, 2010
Gaborone, Botswana

INVITED SPEAKER

Moving Towards Sustainability in Health Information Systems for HIV/AIDS Care and Treatment

Prof. Janise Richards
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Rwanda

Abstract

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During the past decade there has been an explosion of health information systems supporting the care and treatment of HIV/AIDS patients in Africa. Due to the longitudinal nature of antiretroviral therapy (ART), the quality of care provided to ART patients is directly related to the quality of clinical and non-clinical information available to clinicians and ministries of health. Additionally, the complexity of data being captured and increasing number of patients on ART necessitates the use of electronic patient monitoring systems. However, this rapid deployment has resulted in the proliferation of different electronic systems for data collection and management; thus increasing the resources needed to support these systems and reducing the ability to integrate data to facilitate patient care and strategic planning.
These issues have led us to ask: how do we identify the best option(s) for electronic health information systems that can be sustained by ministries of health to support their care and treatment services including the necessary standard clinical data, health indicators, and reporting requirements needed to monitor patients on ART. Through a series of system assessments and evaluations, we are refining models and methods to detect the attributes of health information system suitability and sustainability that provide the optimum evidence to make decisions on appropriate health information systems for HIV/AIDS care. This presentation will describe these models and methods.