According to national data on NCDs prevalence and the number of patients with NCDs enrolled in different health facilities in the country, the coverage of NCDs treatment is around 12%. This means that 88% of patients with NCDs are still in the community and remain undiagnosed and/or unreported. To identify undiagnosed patients with NCDs still in the community, RBC through its NCDs Division in collaboration with partners and districts, have organized an intensified NCDs screening in all Health facilities for the eligible people; 35 years and above in order to identify additional people with NCDs to be vaccinated against COVID-19 and be enrolled into NCDs care and treatment services.
However, the existing NCDs screening data used the paper-based and needs to transform into a digital system that will be providing accurate and real-time data for better follow up and management of NCDs at all levels. The transformation to digital NCDs data capturing system requires robust integrated systems with a unique patient identification number for authentication of individual information to avoid duplication and poor planning.
To achieve the digitalization goal, HISP Rwanda developed a screening and management of NCDs patients in DHIS2 integrated to the National Population Registry.
The tracker focuses on selected diseases: Hypertension, Diabetes, and Obesity. This is in addition to the Cancer registry linked to CANREG. Cancer has a separate DHIS-2 instance.
How it works:
Client identification using National ID from NPR and his info is auto populated in profile data
After enrolment, the screening starts: data is entered in NCD screening stage, the clinician adds measurements and DHIS2 provides the status and action to be taken existing NCDs protocols. Outcomes and action to be taken a trigged by DHIS2 program rules.
In case of a positive case (Hypertension or Diabetes) a stage is activated for confirmation. The confirmation is done at Health Facility while the screening can be done during outreach programs.
In order to measure the achievement of the activity, target population by health facility has been added. To total 2,922,663 is for fiscal year 2021-2022
The NCD tracker has dashboards for each tracked disease.
DHIS2 assists clinicians to minimize errors by providing outcomes and action to be taken, and statistics at the end of the day. It also helps in follow up of positive cases and referral at any clinic or hospital, helping increase coverage of NCD treatment.
HISP Rwanda is working with DHIS2 core team to have the metatada packaged for global use.