Digital tool allows easy uploading of data
To facilitate the registration of information on Covid-19, the Ministry of Public Health (MSP) implements a new application: ‘Covid-19 PCR’.
The digital tool allows you to upload the information of suspected cases (people who undergo diagnostic tests) and the results from the laboratories.
In the case of laboratories, although they have received talks about the process, the data has not yet been uploaded directly.
During these pandemic months, registration in laboratories has been done manually. First, the physician evaluates the patient and fills out the EPI form.
The document includes age, date of birth and care, place of origin and residence, sex, occupation and nationality. In addition, the day of onset of symptoms, initial diagnosis, among others, were included. The next step has been to scan the sheet and send it to the team of professionals of the respective zonal or district coordination of the Ministry.
These agencies are responsible for uploading the data of the suspected case to ViEpi, the Public Health Surveillance System, developed by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO). There, information on communicable diseases and mandatory notification is stored, such as rabies, Zika, rubella, whooping cough, among others.
According to Jeannete Zurita, from Zurita & Zurita Laboratorios, this system is very old and does not supply due to the large number of figures that are generated.
She said that they were trying to upload the results to ViEpi, but the person was not registered and they had to wait several days, weeks or months, depending on the number of samples processed, until Health officials digitize the information.
Lucy Baldeón, director of the Institute of Biomedicine of the Central University, also indicated that it depends on the Ministry of Health to upload the data.
Another inconvenience they faced was that there were people who took the test on their own, without having a medical request and therefore were not registered in ViEpi.
Katiuska Jiménez, an epidemiologist at Laboratorios Veris, mentioned that talks have been received about the new application in which the suspected case, the sample and the result are recorded.
This mechanism has been in effect from the first day of this month and another of its advantages is that data loading is easy and all actors in the sector (public and private network) will be able to interact.
Likewise, they will enter in a massive way and manage the user and establishment (zonal coordination and district management).
The platform was developed by the National Directorate of Information and Communication Technology of the Ministry of Health and was carried out within the framework of Ministerial Agreement 00078, dated October 27.
The standard also requires centers to close the cases registered in the old tool, although the tool will be used for other pathologies.
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