With CHITS, patient care has improved and patient visits are more efficient, having reduced the four to five minutes needed to search paper records to just seconds. The ability to easily view, record, and share patient information across the multiple computers within a health clinic means that health workers are able to complete patient consultations earlier in the day in order to provide more support to community health workers.
Vertical health care programs of the Department of Health (DOH) which disintegrates into the health centers and managed by a public health nurse or midwife are now integrated by CHITS enabling data consolidation, report generation, and planning possible at any given time.
CHITS features an appointment and scheduling system which projects how many patients,medicines, supplies or staff members will be needed for the day. Clinical-level information provides maintaining the appropriate amount of life-saving drug supplies and identifying human resource needs.
Patients, especially those enrolled in the Maternal Health Care, Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI) or the National Tuberculosis Program (NTP), who have not been reporting on their scheduled appointments or taking the prescribed course therapy (i.e. TB drugs) can be monitored.
The system also allows community health workers to send SMS messages to report injuries and receive training on health surveillance via their mobile phones. The CHITS open source community believes they should teach local health workers “how to use the information system, [and] allow them to gain insight into their condition so that they can decide to take action and be proactive in empowering others to do the same.” Like many mHealth projects, CHITS had found that empowering local communities with information and enabling two-way data flows is an effective strategy.
Over the past 7 years, CHITS has been deployed in 50 rural health units (as of June 2011) in the Philippines. Local government units (LGUs) and their respective local chief executives (i.e. governor and/or mayor) have contacted the UP Manila – NThC for deployment and installation of CHITS in their respective locality. The LCEs have seen the importance of sustaining the project by initially institutionalizing appropriation for its sustainability through local ordinances and legislation. These are needed for the maintenance of hardware and updating the new modules of CHITS.
Benefits of CHITS:
Faster patient record retrieval.
Patient spent waiting for services are minimized.
Streamline work flow of health center transactions.
More efficient data entry and storage.
Appointment and follow-up scheduling system
Monitor the health of the community through data accrual daily
Projection of patient loads
Secure access to health care workers (including audit trail)
Easier and timely generation of health reports that the DOH's Field Health Service Information System (FHSIS) requires
Potential for inter-health center integration, thus makes tracking of patient more convenient
Detect possible outbreaks
Review of the health of the community can be done on a regular basis
Projection of logistical needs to allocate supplies and manpower Department of Health (DOH)
Integrates health programs
Aggregate data to any format that the DOH and PhilHealth requires
Facilitates epidemiology data analysis
Makes information available to stakeholders in the community for better decision making
Leads to more efficient use of community resources
Visible services to the community
Integration of PhilHealth benefits into CHITS (better monitoring and reporting to PhilHealth)
Additional Information
Technology Info
Purpose: Extending Geographic Access
Purpose: Improving Diagnosis and Treatment
Reported results available.
