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THE PROBLEM
The number of people living with HIV/AIDS continues to grow dramatically, with nearly 5 million people infected within the last year alone. The impact is particularly acute in the developing world. The response to the epidemic has been significant. The response has profoundly affected the structure and operations of district and country health care systems and has strained the capacity of community-based healthcare organizations working to prevent, manage, and mitigate the disease.
Along with staffing, training, physical infrastructure, and a range of other key service elements, the capacity of providers in the developing world to capture, manage, and share health care data is recognized as fundamental to the effective response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
THE SOLUTION
Based on our research, fieldwork in five African countries, and tool analysis activities, the Healthtoolkit research team has specified the following key findings regarding the data management needs of HIV/AIDS caregivers in these low-resource settings: - There is a need for a data tool that serves the needs of community-based caregivers, as well as clinic-based health workers.
- Current health data-collection practices within individual organizations are diverse and rarely coordinated with the work of other organizations.
- The different groups of caregivers within organizations have a range of needs with regards to data collection.
- There are many people and organizations currently working to solve the data collection and analysis challenge.
- The existing range of “off the shelf” data management products are too narrowly developed to meet the needs of the target audience or are developed in such a way that they could not be broadly applied in low-resource environments.
Click here to download the .pdf version of our report on Information Management Challenges
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