Expanding an electronic medical record to support community health worker and nutritional support programs in rural...

Scaling up HIV and TB treatment rapidly in a resource poor setting is greatly facilitated when community health workers can monitor patient well-being and ensure that patients adhere to medication. In addition, it is almost essential that patients receive a food package while being treated for HIV and TB, since medication can be ineffective if patient is undernourished. However,a community health worker program and food program can add significant administrative overhead,particularly if reporting or evaluation is required. By expanding an Electronic Medical Record to cover these programs in addition to treatment programs, it becomes easier to administer them and combine interesting data from different sources.