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. 2018 Apr 16:2017:1401-1410.
eCollection 2017.

Design and evaluation of a web-based decision support tool for district-level disease surveillance in a low-resource setting

Meenal Pore  1 , David M Sengeh  1 , Purity Mugambi  1 , Nuri V Purswani  2 , Tom Sesay  3 , Anna Lena Arnold  4 , Anh-Minh A Tran  4 , Ralph Myers  4
Affiliations

Design and evaluation of a web-based decision support tool for district-level disease surveillance in a low-resource setting

Meenal Pore et al. AMIA Annu Symp Proc. .

Abstract

During the 2014 West African Ebola Virus outbreak it became apparent that the initial response to the outbreak was hampered by limitations in the collection, aggregation, analysis and use of data for intervention planning. As part of the post-Ebola recovery phase, IBM Research Africa partnered with the Port Loko District Health Management Team (DHMT) in Sierra Leone and GOAL Global, to design, implement and deploy a web-based decision support tool for district-level disease surveillance. This paper discusses the design process and the functionality of the first version of the system. The paper presents evaluation results prior to a pilot deployment and identifies features for future iterations. A qualitative assessment of the tool prior to pilot deployment indicates that it improves the timeliness and ease of using data for making decisions at the DHMT level.

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Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
The system architecture comprises of four layers: datasets, data stores, analytics and a web application.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
The Home page provides an overview of the aggregate reporting rate (1) and risk level (2) of facilities.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
The Health Unit page provides a list of health units in a given geographic area selected by the user (1), prioritized by highest risk score. The user can click on the report icon to see a full report for each facility (2).
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
IDSR Report page showing (1) health facilities color coded by their current risk level, (2) cumulative reporting rates for the chosen geographic area and (3) disease incidence trends for the chosen geographic area.
Figure 5.
Figure 5.
A screenshot of the Data Store Page. The user can (1) easily upload local tabulated data files, (2) map files with GIS information and search for files related to the selected file or word using semantic search, (3) view the data in a tabular view and (4) search for files by geographic area using a bounding box.
Figure 6
Figure 6
A schematic diagram of the facility risk scoring algorithm used in the deployed version of the system.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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