Cloud based Clinical Decision Support System
Enables Jharkhand to respond rapidly to the COVID-19 crisis
Jharkhand Integrated Development Health And Nutrition (JIDHAN) is an initiative to organise a community-centric healthcare response to COVID-19 in Jharkhand.
The JIDAHN Foundation has a deep presence in Jharkhand through long-term partners and has been actively supporting in organising immediate humanitarian and healthcare responses on the ground since the beginning of the pandemic. With migrant workers returning home in huge numbers and COVID-19 cases rising, it was clear that this would very quickly worsen the state’s existing healthcare challenges and push an already-strained public health system into complete collapse. It was, therefore, an urgent need to organise a well-coordinated community-centric health care emergency response to COVID-19, at scale. The goal was to provide real-time data of COVID-19 screenings and infections to improve and more efficiently control the pandemic in the state.
e-JIDHAN was conceptualised as an emergency healthcare response to COVID-19 while creating sustainable, long-term capacity for delivering basic services as well as organising such emergency responses in future.
The purpose of e-JIDHAN was to screen large rural populations across Jharkhand to identify suspected COVID19 patients and extend care to them. EHR.Network developed a COVID-19 screening Clinical Decision Support System (CDSS) that advised even non-medical personnel about the possibility of COVID Infection using a set of pre-defined parameters. This CDSS was integrated with e-JIDHAN screening application to provide real time decision support. The system was developed as a rule based system to enable dynamic updates to the rules and also support multiple protocols depending upon the field requirements.
The protocols for the CDSS were designed in collaboration with medical professionals from DHIndia foundation (dhindia.org) experienced in managing COVID.
The CDSS server from EHR.Network enabled quick and efficient CDSS assessment to be done by even non-medical staff with a rule-driven assessment at two levels
- Level 1: Symptomatic Covid Assessment based on age and a set of symptoms gathered verbally or through easily available devices such as thermometer and SPo2
- Level 2: Risk assessment based on comorbidities and age
Once assessment at the above two levels is done, a recommendation on next steps is provided.
As of June 2021, the platform supported 3.13 lakh screenings, across 1670 villages, 308 panchayats, 28 blocks across Chhotanagpur division of Jharkhand.