A project to design an electronic application with the potential of integration to electronic records was one of the winners of the call for proposals for the implementation of IS4H projects promoted by the Pan American Health Organization. Developed by the Department of Biomedical Informatics of the University of Utah, in the United States, together with institutions in Peru, the project is aimed at health professionals who relay data related to the social determinants of health, such as nurses , doctors, social workers. The data can be used by decision makers and generators of health policies to plan improvement interventions. The objective of the researchers involved in the project is to work on conditions of high prevalence and on disadvantaged groups.
The social determinants of health are a key element when planning health policies and they are not always relieved or registered by health personnel. The objective of the project is to carry out an exhaustive analysis of the situation of health institutions in Lima, Peru, when relieving social determinants of health. Once the needs are identified, the next step is to design an electronic application with the potential of integration to the electronic records, following the good practices described by health informatics, and then implement it by performing an evaluation to disseminate the results found.
The creators of the project hope to obtain results such as:
- Situation Analysis. Using best practices, such as the Cognitive Task Analsysis (CTA) will document the needs described by decision makers and clinical users and will be used in the design and development of the application. The results of this study will be published in scientific journals or conferences of the specialty;
- Design and implementation of the solution. Based on the result of the first stage, a user-centered design will be used and a solution will be implemented according to the needs described in the analysis of the first stage. State-of-the-art standards are used for this development;
- Evaluation. In this stage, a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the use of the application will be made. The results will be sent for publication to a scientific journal with interest in the subject.
As not all countries are familiar with the use and implementation of standards, training sessions will also be conducted in Peru, both face-to-face and virtual, on the subject. Once the application is implemented, usage monitoring will be done as an evaluation and satisfaction questionnaires, as well as usage data.
