STREAMLINING DOCTOR-PATIENT COMMUNICATION TO PERSONALIZE CARE

Abdoulaye Bagaya, a DCDJ Fellow in Côte d’Ivoire, developed an app for FSU COM Abobo Sagbe hospital during his 7-month internship placement. The app helps community counselors, healthcare assistants, and clinic counselors manage patient contact and treatment information.
Côte d’Ivoire

Problem

Before Abdoulaye arrived at the hospital in Abobo, healthcare workers would manually look up phone numbers to call about 60 patients per day before their appointments. This process involved searching through hard copies of patient files, paperwork, and other information to find patients’ records and contact information – sometimes unsuccessfully. The hospital’s community counselors were the ones burdened with managing nearly 800 total patients, tracking down contact information, and calling patients.Without contact from the hospital, patients are left largely to themselves, expected to be engaged in their care sufficiently to own and manage their medical conditions in a timely manner.

Underscoring this challenge, community counselors were not the only ones working with the patient records – doctors and other administrative staff would all regularly handle the same physical records. It was difficult for multiple people to reference the same information at the same time when only one physical copy of the record was available.

Solution

Abdoulaye assessed this situation at the site, identifying the main challenge was that community counselors were having a hard time finding patient contact information to confirm appointments. This was often because another person would be holding the physical file, or because the file was simply misplaced or lost.

Abdoulaye came up with a tool that would digitize the name and phone number of the patients – enabling counselors to more easily contact patients whenever they would miss appointments.

Processes

Abdoulaye used Excel and Microsoft Visual Basic to develop the tool. He focused on two easy-to-use methods that community counselors – less familiar with complex technical solutions – would be able to integrate into their daily work. He also completed in-depth training and a webinar tutorial for community counselors to use the tool independently. Because of Covid-19, additional in-person training could not be completed; however, the webinar tutorial was an easy, remote alternative that empowered counselors to be trained on their own time, on their own schedules.

Outcomes and Impacts

First and foremost, the tool optimizes community counselors’ time at the hospital. Before the tool, it would take 1-2 days for counselors to gather all the contact information to call patients. Now, thanks to the app, needed information is ready in 25-30 minutes. Instead of spending days collecting information, they have been dedicating their saved time to home visits with patients, delivering medications, and providing personalized care. With increased home visits, community counselors can better ensure patients are taking their medications daily. Additionally, they can focus on health promotion, reducing HIV/AIDS stigma, and providing advice to people who have been recently diagnosed with the disease. These patient home visits, supporting mental wellbeing, and as Abdoulaye put it, “letting [newly diagnosed patients] know it isn’t the end of the world, and that their lives will continue on.”

Conclusion

Instead of having to continuously search for patient records to track down their contact information, community counselors can now pay special attention to personalized healthcare – essential for HIV/AIDS positive patients – to ensure they continue to seek the care they need. According to NIH research publications, home visits decrease costs, improve health outcomes, and reduce hospital stays. Not only has Abdoulaye’s tool drastically changed the way this Abobo hospital is able to provide care, Abdoulaye himself learned a lot during the process. As a statistician by trade, he can now use a wider range of technical tools and machine learning algorithms to analyze data, build dashboards, and support decision making. Moving forward, in addition to continuing his endeavors in healthcare data use, he also plans to take his knowledge gained as a DCDJ Fellow to the fiscal and tax industry as well.

Key Collaborators

Development Gateway

Development Gateway (DG) provides data and digital solutions for international development. We create tools that help institutions collect and analyze information; strengthen institutional capability to use data; and explore what processes are needed to enable evidence-based decisions. A mission-driven nonprofit since 2001 with staff based in five global hubs and around the world, DG makes development data easier to gather, use, and understand.

Des Chiffres et Des Jeunes (DCDJ)

Des Chiffres et Des Jeunes (DCDJ) is a program led by Development Gateway and funded by the MCC-PEPFAR Data Collaboratives for Local Impact (DCLI) Program. DCDJ aims to bolster the subnational supply and use of data for Ivorian citizens, engage youth as champions of these services, and fuel innovation to address rising data needs.

FSU COM Abobo Sagbe

FSU COM Abobo Sagbe is a community health center located in the neighborhood of Abobo in Abidjan. The public health facility is one of PEPFAR’s priority sites in the fight against HIV/AIDS.