Transition to an in-facility electronic Tuberculosis register: Lessons from a South African pilot project
Southern African Journal of HIV Medicine
| Field | Value | |
| Title | Transition to an in-facility electronic Tuberculosis register: Lessons from a South African pilot project | |
| Creator | Myburgh, Hanlie Peters, Remco P.H. Hurter, Theunis Grobbelaar, Cornelius J. Hoddinott, Graeme | |
| Description | Background: South Africa has one of the highest incidences of Tuberculosis (TB) globally. High co-morbid HIV prevalence complicates TB management and treatment outcomes. Growing evidence suggests that integrating the TB and HIV programmes will improve the overall results.Objectives: To describe how TB programme staff at various levels of the South African health system responded to the transition from a paper-based to an electronic register of TB data integrated with HIV programme data.Method: Three primary health service facilities in the Cape Winelands district, Western Cape province, South Africa served as pilot sites for implementation. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 21 TB programme staff purposively selected at facility, sub-district, district and provincial levels of the health system, based on their involvement in implementing electronic TB data. An objective-driven thematic frame was used to analyse the data.Results: Fears about the transition included reductions in data quality, changes to the status quo and a lack of computer literacy. Participants acknowledged benefits of reduced workloads, speed of accessing patient-level data and click-of-a-button reporting. Three factors influenced the ease of adopting the new system: firstly, implementation challenged the vertical position of the TB programme, TB data and staff’s conventional roles and responsibilities; secondly, perceptions of the paper-based register as functional and reliable made the transition to electronic seem unnecessary; and thirdly, lack of a process of change management challenged staff’s ability to internalise the proposed change.Conclusion: A process of change management is critical to facilitate the efficiency and effectiveness with which the electronic in-facility TB register is implemented. | |
| Publisher | AOSIS | |
| Date | 2020-01-16 | |
| Identifier | 10.4102/sajhivmed.v21i1.1025 | |
| Source | Southern African Journal of HIV Medicine; Vol 21, No 1 (2020); 7 pages 2078-6751 1608-9693 | |
| Language | eng | |
| Relation |
The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:
https://sajhivmed.org.za/index.php/hivmed/article/view/1025/1744
https://sajhivmed.org.za/index.php/hivmed/article/view/1025/1743
https://sajhivmed.org.za/index.php/hivmed/article/view/1025/1745
https://sajhivmed.org.za/index.php/hivmed/article/view/1025/1742
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