Implementing electronic medical record systems in developing.pdfVIP

Informatics in Primary Care 2005;13:83–95 # 2005 PHCSG, British Computer Society Refereed papers Implementing electronic medical record systems in developing countries Hamish SF Fraser MBChB MSc Assistant Professor, Division of Social Medicine and Healthcare Inequalities, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA Paul Biondich MD MS Assistant Professor, Regenstrief Institute, Inc. and Children’s Health Services Research, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, IN, USA Deshen Moodley MSc Senior Lecturer, Department of Computer Science, University of KwaZulu Natal, Durban, South Africa Sharon Choi MS Research Assistant, Program in Infectious Disease and Social Change, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA Burke W Mamlin MD Assistant Professor, Regenstrief Institute, Inc. and Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, IN, USA Peter Szolovits Professor, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and Division of Health Sciences Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA ABSTRACT The developing world faces a series of health crises practical lessons in design and implementation including HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis that threaten from our experience in doing this work. Finally, the lives of millions of people. Lack of infrastructure we discuss the importance of collaboration between and trained, experienced staff are considered im- projects in the development of electronic medical portant barriers to scaling up treatment for these record systems rather than reinventing systems in diseases. In this paper we explain why information isolation, and the use of open standards and open systems are important in many healthcare projects source software. in the developing world. We discuss pilot projects demonstrating that such systems are p