Interoperability Can Help Stop Disease Outbreaks in Their Tracks

December 01, 2017A new  system in Liberia is speeding up disease surveillance and response times.How do you reduce the time it takes to identify a potential disease outbreak in order to manage it effectively?  In Liberia —where resources are constrained and the devastation of Ebola still lingers—the government, IntraHealth International, and other partners are working urgently to answer this question.The simple answer? Connect the dots quickly.IntraHealth is helping the Ministry of Health speed up this process from several weeks to just a few days.Health authorities must be alerted to a suspected disease or condition in order to act appropriately. Then, information must move across those connections fast. Very fast.Health authorities require reliable, real-time information about a potential outbreak in order to communicate across departments, locations, and personnel (the dots) to quickly facilitate disease identification and management tasks. In Liberia, IntraHealth is helping the Ministry of Health speed up this process from several weeks to just a few days.The first step to connecting the dots here was identifying them.There is the health worker, oftentimes in a remote health facility, who identifies someone with a possible disease or condition requiring surveillance and further testing. The health worker completes a case alert form, and often collects a blood sample or other specimen from the patient. In order to move this information across the country, a carbon co...
Source: IntraHealth International - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Source Type: news