Community Health Active Response Toolkit

Information Management for Home-Based Care

Timothy Heidelheidel@mit.edu

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

William DelHagen (PI)Community Health Innovations, Zambia

Outline

• Home-Based Care Record Keeping

• Community Health Active Response Toolkit (CHART)

• Initial Implementation Progress

• Next Steps

Healthcare in Zambia

• Formal healthcare infrastructure unable to meet demands of HIV/AIDS epidemic

• Home-Based Care (HBC) programs

Home-Based Care

Geographic Zones

HBC Projects

Home 1

HRT Main Office

Primary Care Giver

Zone C

Patient

Zone N

Zone B

Home 3

HBC 2

Home 2

Home 4

...

...

Home 25...

HBC 6

HBC 1

Nurse

+

Coordinator

Zone A

Home Care Visits

Care Supporters

Staff

Current Record Keeping

• Information cannot be transferred easily. 

• Many IT systems at facility level, but no community-based systems

Program Administration

• Limited staff resources and time

• Monitoring & Evaluation

• Funding

Anti Retroviral Therapy

• Majority of ART services outside of the health facilities – Counseling – Adherence support and side-effect monitoring– Nutrition support

• Effective ART programs require linkage between ART facility and HBC

New Statistics

• HBC workers have access to important information unavailable at the facility level – Socio-economic– HIV/AIDS staging– Family-wide health– Orphans and vulnerable children

CHART Overview

Initial Implementation: Human Resources Trust (HRT)

• December 2004 – Initial Funding Received

• January 2005 – Initial Discussions with HRT

• February 2005 – D-Lab Class at MIT Begins

• April 2005 – Software Development began

• July 2005 – Initial testing

• August 2005 – First full scale implementation

Data Entry Personnel

• Skilled candidates available

• Minimal training required

Objectives

• Develop and implement information management systems at 5 sites

– Work with all levels of staff at partner organizations to develop user requirements and system specifications

– Develop software and design hardware systems– Help HBC partners with implementation– Train staff in use of the system– Build structures to ensure long-term sustainability

and support for systems

Next Steps

• Work with HBC partners to help them use the new tools to serve their clients more effectively. 

• Integrate facility-level systems

• Make information available

Questions?

Comments?

Suggestions?