A partnership between ThoughtWorks and Save the Children has resulted in the development of an EMR with a very specific purpose: To rapidly collect and manage the medical records of patients under stressful and potentially dangerous situations, such as a highly infectious outbreak.
Here are four things to know about the new EMR.
1. The open-source software platform is the most comprehensive clinical EMR built for a medical emergency in a resource-limited environment. The developers anticipate it being easily adapted for use in a range of future medical crises, including natural disasters.
2. The Ebola outbreak sparked its development. "The complexity of the current West African Ebola epidemic –which is the largest and most widespread Ebola outbreak ever recorded –has created enormous barriers for patient care," Darius Jazayeri, global health technical principal for ThoughtWorks, said in a statement. "Even seemingly straightforward tasks like collecting and accessing quality patient clinical records have been nearly impossible using conventional methods. The patient data collected using our electronic medical record platform allows Save the Children not only to collect invaluable patient data to be used for immediate care, but also allows us to better understand a disease about which so little is still known.”
3. The system was tested at Save the Children’s Ebola Treatment Centre in Kerry Town, Sierra Leone, on laptops and waterproof, sterilizable tablets. Different features can be enabled for different areas, depending on demand.
4. The EMR supports patient registration, bed allocation, recording of vital signs and symptoms and ordering and administering medications, among other features.
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