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Small clinics in low-middle-income countries frequently lack the financial and technical resources to support patient-record automation---relying instead on paper records to track patient visits. Earlier successes introducing automated solutions into these clinics often eroded quickly after external support was withdrawn. The piClinic Console is designed to automate key aspects of patient information management in small, limited-resource clinics so as to introduce automation into a clinic in a way that the clinic can sustain with little or no additional support. Unlike previous efforts to scale down existing medical records systems for a small clinic, the piClinic Console was developed to include only the functions that benefit most from automation. The design was implemented to work on low-cost hardware to minimize initial cost and dependence on external support. After encouraging laboratory test results, this design was tested in four Honduran clinics to evaluate the users' experiences and the utility of the design. Clinic response was universally positive; however, field testing identified that success relied on accommodating the different roles in the clinic, supporting at least one printer, and enabling multiple users to access the system from multiple devices. |
