Using Touchscreen electronic medical record systems to support and monitor national scale-up of antiretroviral therapy in Malawi

Complete, accurate, and timely data are critical for providing high quality patient care, programmatic monitoring and evaluation of antiretroviral therapy scale-up, continuity of care for chronic illness, and rational drug forecasting. Manual paper-based aggregation of data and compilation of reports become unfeasible as patient cohorts on treatment and data increase. A point-of-care (POC) electronic medical record (EMR) system combines healthcare delivery and data collection processes into one activity, with the added bonus of providing enhanced decision support to clinicians during the patient encounter. Challenges associated with operating computers in a resource-constrained setting are many, but have been rigorously addressed during the scale-up of POC EMR to monitor and support ART scale-up in Malawi. The experience gained and infrastructure built through successful deployment of the ART EMR will facilitate its adaptation and use for other chronic diseases (e.g., tuberculosis, diabetes mellitus, and hypertension), preparing a foundation for a comprehensive electronic health record system. © 2010 Douglas et al.