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Electronic notifiable disease reporting system from primary care health centres in Qatar: a comparison of paper-based versus electronic reporting

Authors :
Amjad Mohammed Idries
Khalid Elawad
Dina Ali
Hanan Al Mujalli
Hamda Abdulla A
Catherine Maria Kiely
Mohamed Ahmed Syed
Qotba
Bongiwe Vilakazi
Source :
BMJ Innovations. 6:32-38
Publication Year :
2020
Publisher :
BMJ, 2020.

Abstract

Communicable disease outbreaks can spread rapidly, causing enormous losses to individual health, national economies and social well-being. Therefore, communicable disease surveillance is essential for protecting public health. In Qatar, electronic reporting from primary health centres was proposed as a means of improving disease notification, replacing a paper-based method of reporting (via internal mail, facsimile, email or telephone), which has disadvantages and requires active cooperation and engagement of staff. This study is a predescriptive and postdescriptive analysis, which compared disease notifications received from electronic and paper-based systems during 3-month evaluation periods (quarter 2 in 2016 and quarter 2 in 2018 for paper-based and electronic reporting, respectively) in terms of comprehensiveness, timeliness and completeness. For the 23 notifiable diseases included in this study, approximately twice as many notifications were received through the electronic reporting system as from the paper-based reporting system, demonstrating it is more comprehensive. An overall increase in notifications is likely to have a positive public health impact in Qatar. 100% of electronic notifications were received in a timely manner, compared with 28% for paper-based notifications. Findings of the study show that electronic reporting presents a revolutionary opportunity to advance public health surveillance. It is recommended that electronic reporting be rolled out more widely to improve the completeness, stability and representativeness of the national public health surveillance system in Qatar as well as other countries.

Details

ISSN :
2055642X and 20558074
Volume :
6
Database :
OpenAIRE
Journal :
BMJ Innovations
Accession number :
edsair.doi...........b9192aca65ca43f8701cf6e43eb454eb
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjinnov-2018-000329