Delivering Better HIV Care in Sub-Saharan Africa Using Phone-Based Clinical Summaries and Reminders

Despite the effective use of computerized clinical summaries and reminders in high-income countries to increase the quality of care, the difficulties of implementing and deploying such systems in lowincome countries have hindered their adoption. To become viable in these settings, clinical summaries and reminders systems must reliably deliver information while enabling healthcare providers to explore relevant data. This paper begins by explaining the need for summaries and reminders and how they might increase the efficiency of care. It then discusses the challenges similar systems have overcome and how those lessons learned apply to the context of providers in Sub-Saharan Africa. Finally, we describe the development of a phone-based clinical summaries and reminder system designed to increase the quality of Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) care in Sub-Saharan Africa. In our evaluations, we will show through instrumentation and user studies that such a system is more available and can lead to more compliance with HIV testing guidelines.