MANILA, Philippines - Bienvenida Cabezon, a physician who works at the municipal health office of Capas, Tarlac, has never touched a computer. In fact she dreads operating one for fear that she may press the wrong button.
With no single computer in her office and with practically everyone being computer illiterate, Dr. Cabezon and her colleagues record patients’ information on paper and submit records to the provincial health office. All records are put on file and tediously submitted as people riding motorcycles and jeepneys deliver them.
With records from these community-based units becoming the bases for the country’s national health indicators, one can only surmise how technology, or the lack of it, has affected the country’s policy-making and healthcare delivery.
The province of Tarlac hopes to change that as it becomes the country’s first local government unit to use 3G wireless technology and store medical health information of patients that can be easily accessed by healthcare providers and policy-makers.
Through a project called Wireless Access for Health (WAH), a government-private sector collaboration that started in 2009, Tarlac hopes to computerize its database of patient information in all of its 38 provincial health clinics by end of this year.
The project was introduced by US-based Quallcomm Inc., a world leader in 3G and next-generation mobile technologies, and SMART Communications, and supported by the Department of Health, University of the Philippines, United States Agency for International Development, and the provincial government of Tarlac. It uses a software called Community Health Information Tracking System (CHITS) developed by UP in computerizing patients records.
The records are transmitted to the Philippine Field Health Service Information System that is the government’s major resource for managing public health data. FHIS data is used for policy analysis and planning at all levels of the public health system.
Dr. Cabezon admits it was not easy for her and her colleagues to adjust to technology but have realized its importance in managing patients’ records and healthcare delivery. “When we were first introduced to it, we were all hesitantn,” she said, speaking in Filipino. “If the WAH didn’t come into our lives, I wouldn’t know how to log in or log out,” she quipped.
As of April this year, more than 109,000 patient consultations have been recorded using WAH as a result of improved record searching that has reduced securing patient information in Tarlac, from five minutes to a few seconds.
Mayor Miguel Rivilla of the municipality of Panuqui said the introduction of WAH has helped the municipal government to secure reliable data from the communities and get first-hand information on health indicators. He admitted that “bad record keeping” affected healthcare delivery in his area during a dengue epidemic last year.
Dr. Soe Nyunt-U, country representative of the World Health Organization, said the absence of a real time national health database in the Philippines even affects the WHO’s work in coming up with its country report.
Soe noted that delays in reporting happen in the Philippines as healthcare information is taken from barangay health units that get transmitted to rural health units, city and health offices, regional offices, before data reaches the national government.
“It’s not surprising to find a report coming out from a particular program with information 2 or three years late. Of course we can’t afford to wait so we have to make use of estimation methodology in getting those information reported and sometimes also make use of surveys,” he told Interaksyon.com.
According to him, the WHO uses alternatives like conducting surveys and partnering with other international organizations to make up for the delays in securing health information from the government. He however admitted that surveys capture only a “small portion” of the population unlike real time data that could have been in place like those in other ASEAN countries such as Thailand and Singapore.
source: interaksyon.com
