Cardiovascular Journal of Africa: Vol 26 No 6 (November/December 2015)

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CARDIOVASCULAR JOURNAL OF AFRICA • Volume 26, No 6, November/December 2015 232 AFRICA
programmes, the eRegister can foster compliance with the WHF
guidelines for diagnosis of RHD25 by reproducing the criteria
in the electronic forms, which are therefore readily accessible to
health workers at the point of screening.
The platform is available at no cost, and provides countries
and regions with an opportunity to adopt efficient, standardised
patient register tools for the implementation of local RHD
control programmes, to conduct RHD research studies, or to
satisfy national reporting requirements should RHD be identified
as a reportable disease. Moreover, further improvements can be
made to the eRegister that perhaps would not be possible with
the use of paper-based data-collection forms.
There are limitations of the eRegister system relative
to traditional paper-based tools. Despite the fact that the
‘technology footprint’ with this system is relatively low, it will
still be a barrier in some settings with regard to financial costs,
familiarity by users, and need for ongoing troubleshooting and
technical support. However, we believe these barriers can be
effectively addressed by end-user training, and that the barriers
will be lowered as the use of mobile technologies becomes more
common among healthcare workers.
Conclusions
The WHF register has been successfully converted to an open-
access eRegister platform. Preliminary results from a local
RHD study in Zambia, for which a version of the eRegister was
adapted, support the expected benefits of using an eRegister.
Future improvements to the system (such as SMS reminders for
families and integration with portable echocardiographic devices)
can be added to the platform, as dictated by programmatic needs.
Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research funded the project. Joris van
Dam led the development of the eRegister and wrote the first draft of the
manuscript. John Musuku, Liesl Zühlke, Mark Engel, Nick Nestle, Brigitta
Tadmor, Jonathan Spector and Bongani Mayosi contributed to the develop-
ment of the eRegister and participated in the writing of the manuscript. Joris
van Dam, Brigitta Tadmor and Jonathan Spector are employees of Novartis.
Nick Nestle is an employee of Dimagi Inc, the company that developed the
CommCare platform.
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