Hi, all,
I wrote up this piece for our community newspaper here in Dumaguete.
Deadline is tight, so I turned this in without any verification. I based
the info on Dr. Marcelo's links at amarcelo.linuxforhealth.org, in
particular, the CHITS presentation.
If UP CoM MIU would like to add more details (e.g. technology used,
interesting examples), I can plug it into the second version and have it
posted at the PLUG website.
In the meantime, I am posting this story (warts and all) so people can
better understand the impact of Dr. M's work.
Community Health Informatics
This year, the Philippine open source community had good reason to take more
than a passing interest in the Ten Outstanding Young Men awards. That
reason was Dr. Alvin Marcelo of the UP College of Medicine. Dr. Marcelo is
a staunch advocate of open source and has led efforts to apply it in medical
informatics. A core component of the work for which he was selected for the
TOYM award this year was the Community Health Information Tracking System
(CHITS).
What is medical informatics and why is it so important for the country?
Medical informatics is the application of information technology to health
care. At the heart of it, health care is very much an information-driven
practice. Health care professionals have to diagnose conditions and
administer treatment based on symptoms and case histories. Medical
informatics gives practitioners easier access to relevant information so
they can be more effective in their work.
In a country where the ratio of doctors and nurses to the population at
large is steadily on the decline, medical informatics becomes an essential
tool to augment thinly-stretched resources. Nowhere is this more apparent
than in community health centers which serves people who need quality health
care most but are ironically the least able to afford it.
This is where a program like CHITS comes in. CHITS is the brainchild of Dr.
Herman Tolentino, Dr. Cito Maramba, and Dr. Marcelo, along with other
doctors at the UP College of Medicine Medical Informatics Unit. The CHITS
program fulfills an important role in community health services. CHITS,
first rolled out in a pilot program in Pasay City, gives doctors, nurses,
midwives and barangay health workers access to data for critical
decision-making.
On the level of individual patients, this means quick access to medical
records and related information. CHITS stores treatment history,
immunization records, consultation appointments, and Philhealth membership
for easy organization and retrieval. It also gives an integrated view for
their program frontliners, particularly those involved in tuberculosis,
vaccination, maternal care, and child care.
On the level of the community, it is even more valuable. CHITS forms part
of the stream of information that begins with data collection by midwives
and health workers, traverses the provincial and regional health offices,
and ends with the Department of Health. It helps with policy development
and decision-making processes as to what programs to roll out and what
resources to allocate.
Although CHITS is still in its pilot stage in Pasay City, there are still
several capabilities that UP College of Medicine plans to add. Future
directions include the use of cellphones as data entry and retrieval,
integration with geographic information system for mapping, and data mining
for identifying trends and policy-making. Most importantly, the UP College
of Medicine also plans to establish relationships with the over 1,700 local
government units to roll out CHITS nationwide.
CHITS, funded by IDRC/Panasia of Canada, was developed entirely on Linux
using open source tools. As an open source success story, CHITS shows that
open source is an enabler for projects happening at the community level.
--
Dominique Gerald M. Cimafranca
villageidiotsavant.blogspot.com
Dumaguete City
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