Information system based on DHIS2 for monitoring pregnant women in Guatemala

Hi, my name is Aitor Garrido Madrigal. I have graduated as Biomedical Engineer at Universidad Politecnica de Madrid and now I am working for EHAS fundation for the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos.

I will be presentating a project in which we are working at Guatemala the 21st of June at 15:45 (Spain timeline) in the sesion " Latin America country stories".

Here is a summary of the presentation:

*The EHAS Foundation and the TulaSalud Association have designed and implemented an information system based on DHIS2 to cover the needs of a prenatal care program in a context of low connectivity in rural Guatemala. This program trains and equips nurses from the public system to perform prenatal check-ups with basic ultrasound and rapid tests in rural communities in Barillas, in the Department of Huehuetenango, which has the highest Maternal Mortality Ratio in Guatemala. Using the tools provided by DHIS2, the paper forms used during the different stages of prenatal care have been digitized to facilitate a better patient follow-up. These forms include the patient’s history and data from each prenatal check-up: weight, height, blood pressure, gestational week, ultrasound imaging, and test results for HIV, syphilis, hepatitis, anaemia, and urine infection. The data is recorded through the DHIS2 App. However, ultrasound images are captured with Philips’ Lumify app and, when connected, sent to an open-source PAC server called Orthanc. This submission is made through the Lumify application itself, and the images are stored in Orthanc in DICOM format. *

An automatic script is then responsible for converting the DICOM images to JPG format and sending them to the DHIS2 server via the API. To assign the images to each patient, a patient identifier code is used, which is unique, and must be entered in both DHIS2 and Lumify. In our case, this code is the national identification number (CUI in Guatemala). If the woman does not remember her CUI, a code is generated from her name, date of birth and place of residence. On the other hand, a personalized notification system has been configured. This system allows knowing the status of the form during the attention stage. These forms are filled out by the nurses first. Once completed, if the nurse marks the form as “Completed and pending urgent review”, the notification system will send an automatic message to a specialist asking him/her to review the form as soon as possible. Once reviewed, the specialist will again select the status of the form and in case “Reviewed and with errors” is selected, the notification system will send a message to the nurse responsible for that patient. Likewise, indicators have been created, which can be consulted from the main dashboard of the DHIS2 web services. In addition, we have more specific indicators about each stage, such as the number of glucose tests performed, the number of twin pregnancies registered in the system or the number of patients living with VIH.

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Thanks for sharing this country story @aitor_garrido :+1:

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