IQChart Case Study

The Rwandan Ministry of Health requires that clinics use a modified version of the WHO register to collect pre-ART and ART patient data. This approach is not uncommon and other countries also mandate that clinics use a variant of the WHO register. AIDSRelief oversees Monitoring and Evaluation in Rwanda and several other countries that use the WHO register approach and could not use alternative existing software because the data entry process for the WHO registers is significantly different. AIDSRelief needed to develop an application that matched the data fields and data entry process of the WHO registers and could be targeted to low resource clinics. Because one of the countries that needed a data capture solution was Rwanda, the software had to provide both an English and French interface. Furthermore, many of these sites were gathering their data using Excel templates and an easy way to move the data out of Excel into a database without re-entering data was required.

Solution

Futures developed IQChart which captures the WHO register data and follows the suggested data entry process. MS Access was chosen as the software platform because it works well with small databases and can be run in low capacity settings. An upload routine was written to handle uploading the Excel spreadsheets containing current data so that data did not have to be re-entered into the tool during the transition from spreadsheets to the application. Data can be entered patient-by-patient in a register-like screen display or it can be entered along columns of the register for more rapid entry. Reporting is the key output for the tool and a special focus was given to providing views and reports that help the clinics identify issues with the data and quickly produce the reports they need. The application can be configured for English or French display and was architected to allow for other languages for future expansion. This tool was successfully deployed in Rwanda in October 2007 and in Guyana in March 2008.

Challenges

This project started with the simple idea of taking data out of spreadsheets and putting them into a database so that overall data management and reporting would be easier, more accurate and more efficient. It became clear early on in the project that to produce a product that met all of the stakeholder’s needs and could be re-used in other countries would require more time and effort than anticipated. The challenge was to produce and manage the larger scope project while keeping all of the stakeholder’s expectations aligned with the goals of the project.

Another aspect of the project which created a challenge was designing a multi-lingual product that could be easily adapted for left to right languages. The software was architected for localization and moving from one language to another is quite simple.