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Notes 1, 2005 > TB Patient Management Application Assessment
Guide and Decision Tool
TB Notes 1, 2005
No. 1, 2005
TB Patient Management Application Assessment
Guide and Decision Tool
Background
The Tuberculosis Information Management System (TIMS) is an electronic
system that was designed and developed by CDC to help TB control
programs better manage their TB data. However, the patient management
module of TIMS was never fully developed, and thus was useful to
some TB programs but inadequate for others. TIMS is now being phased
out, to be replaced for the most part by the National Electronic
Disease Surveillance System (NEDSS), yet state and local programs
still need a patient management component. The Patient Management
Project was started to address this need.
The TB Patient Management project started with three overarching
objectives:
- Identify core TB patient management practices and program evaluation
activities across programs and document the functional requirements
they represent,
- Use this information to develop criteria to assess and evaluate
existing information system options, and
- Provide local and state TB control programs a means to use the
results of the project.
The challenges CDC and TB controllers encountered with TIMS validated
and reflected the difficulties for any federal agency to develop
an electronic “one-size-fits-all” TB patient management system.
Thus the TB Patient Management project was designed to evaluate
existing electronic patient management systems, not to develop software.
The outcome of this project has been the development of a Web-based
assessment guide. The primary purpose of this guide is to assist
local and state TB control programs as they seek to select an application
that best fits local TB control practices. The first section of
the guide contains background material on many of the aspects of
information technology selection and procurement with TB-specific
examples. It includes a step-by-step guide to assist organizations
as they navigate the process of an evaluation process. Section 2
consists of a tool that can be used to objectively evaluate information
systems using the criteria developed by the project or with local
modifications. The results of the evaluation conducted earlier
this year are available in section 3. These results represent evaluation
outcomes as of May 2004.
The guide, available at infotechnet.org/ntca/,
is supported by the National Tuberculosis Controllers Association
and the Turning Point Program. We are very fortunate to be able
to partner with the Turning Point Program to host this site and
project information/tools. The Turning Point Program, started in
1997, is an initiative of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and
the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Its mission is to transform and strengthen
the public health system in the United States by making it more
community-based and collaborative. The Turning Point Program partners
have created five National Excellence Collaborative projects, one
of which focuses on information technology. The mission of the information
technology collaborative is to assess, evaluate, and recommend to
national policymakers innovative ways to improve the nation's public
health infrastructure by using information technology to effectively
collect, analyze, and disseminate information.
d
The project could not have succeeded without the dedicated effort
of many stakeholders and representatives from local and state health
departments.
We also acknowledge the contributions of the TB Patient Management
Project staff, including Carol Berglund, Sandy Price, and Cathy
Rawls of DTBE and Amy Bakeletz, Teresa Petit Smith, Garth Casdorph,
Stephan Lacasse, and Jackalie Blue of Science Applications International
Corporation (SAIC).
The products of this project have been developed to support state
and local TB control programs. However, we hope these tools will
support similar electronic application assessment needs of local
and state public health department staff who are trying to identify
IT solutions that address multiple public health issues.
—Reported by Subroto Banerji, MPH
Div of TB Elimination
and Jackalie Blue, SAIC
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