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. 2022 Dec 13:8:20552076221144213.
doi: 10.1177/20552076221144213. eCollection 2022 Jan-Dec.

Development of an innovative strategy to determine functioning attributed to health conditions in low-resource settings

Maria Yvonne Charumbira  1 , Karina Berner  1 , Denric Blaauw  2 , Quinette Abegail Louw  1
Affiliations

Development of an innovative strategy to determine functioning attributed to health conditions in low-resource settings

Maria Yvonne Charumbira et al. Digit Health. .

Abstract

Objectives: Rehabilitation is a health strategy that aims to reduce functioning problems. There is a lack of country-level data on the burden and type of functioning problems to inform service planning and management of patients' rehabilitation needs, particularly at primary care level in low-resource settings. Health researchers need an application that automates synthesis of data extracted from several peer-reviewed publications to determine the most prevalent functioning problems compared across several health states. This article describes the journey leading to the conceptualization and development of the Rehab4all application and compares the application's performance to a standard desktop program.

Methods: A descriptive case study approach was used to report on the following steps involved in the development of the web-based Rehab4all application: (i) preliminary literature review to assess the evidence gap of country-level data on functioning problems comparable across several health states; (ii) an initial attempt to perform data extraction and synthesis in Excel; (iii) design and development of Rehab4all; (iv) piloting of the Rehab4all application; and (v) implementation of application with input data from South Africa and Zimbabwe.

Results: The Rehab4all application offers a feasible solution for synthesizing data from several peer-reviewed publications to provide information on context-specific, priority functioning problems at country level through the integrated global International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health Framework (ICF).

Conclusion: This bespoke innovation provides impetus for further development, profile comparison and shared information between countries to co-develop strategies which can strengthen rehabilitation service delivery.

Keywords: Application; ICF; functioning; primary care; rehabilitation; web based.

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Conflict of interest statement

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
The process leading up to the development of the Rehab4all application.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
The data entry windows that are in the Rehab4all application.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Process of identifying functioning problems from published literature at country level using Rehab4all application. Priority functioning problems, for example, based on prevalence, can inform rehabilitation service planning and policymaking.
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
Dashboard of prevalence of each identified functioning problem and database of referenced articles.
Figure 5.
Figure 5.
Dashboard providing visualization of proportion of articles providing data per health condition. Similar tabs provide data per type of healthcare facility and demographic setting.
Figure 6.
Figure 6.
Proposed application of the Rehab4all application to better integrate rehabilitation into healthcare systems.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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