Electronic Health Information Systems to Improve Disease Diagnosis and Management at Point-of-Care in Low and Middle Income Countries: A Narrative Review
Low- and middle-income countries, Diagnosis, treatment, point-of-care, Electronic health information system
The purpose of an electronic health information system (EHIS) is to support health care workers in providing health care services to an individual client and to enable data exchange among service providers. The demand to explore the use of EHIS for diagnosis and management of communicable and non-communicable diseases has increased dramatically due to the volume of patient data and the need to retain patients in care. In addition, the advent of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in high disease burdened low and middle income countries (LMICs) has increased the need for robust EHIS to enable efficient surveillance of the pandemic. EHIS has potential to enable efficient delivery of disease diagnostics services at point-of-care (POC) and reduce medical errors. This review provides an overview of literature on EHIS’s with a focus on describing the key components of EHIS and presenting evidence on enablers and barriers to implementation of EHISs in LMICs. With guidance from the presented evidence, we proposed EHIS key stakeholders’ roles and responsibilities to ensure efficient utility of EHIS for disease diagnosis and management at POC in LMICs.
Tivani Phosa Mashamba-Thompson, Thokozani Khubone, Boikhutso Tlou