Trial reportInternational journal of infectious diseases : IJID : official publication of the International Society for Infectious Diseases2009
Personal digital assistants to collect tuberculosis bacteriology data in Peru reduce delays, errors, and workload, and are acceptable to users: cluster randomized controlled trial.
Trial report in International journal of infectious diseases : IJID : official publication of the International Society for Infectious Diseases, 2009. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 37 citations in OpenAlex.
- Routine Health Information System (RHIS) improvements for strengthened health system management.The Cochrane database of systematic reviews · 2020Pooled it
- Toward Developing a Standardized Core Set of Outcome Measures in Mobile Health Interventions for Tuberculosis Management: Systematic Review.JMIR mHealth and uHealth · 2019Pooled it
- Trial
- Demand sensing and digital tracking for maternal child health (MCH) in Uganda: a pilot study for 'E+TRA health'.BMC medical informatics and decision making · 2022Article
- Development of a Web Database System for a Comprehensive Hypertension Management Program in the Primary Health Care Setting of Urban Areas of Peru.Healthcare informatics research · 2019Article
- Data for action: collection and use of local data to end tuberculosis.Lancet (London, England) · 2015Review
- Mobile technologies and geographic information systems to improve health care systems: a literature review.JMIR mHealth and uHealth · 2014Review
- Managing and monitoring tuberculosis using web-based tools in combination with traditional approaches.Clinical epidemiology · 2013Review
- Adaptation of a web-based, open source electronic medical record system platform to support a large study of tuberculosis epidemiology.BMC medical informatics and decision making · 2012Article
- Implementing medical information systems in developing countries, what works and what doesn't.AMIA ... Annual Symposium proceedings. AMIA Symposium · 2010Article
- A technology selection framework for supporting delivery of patient-oriented health interventions in developing countries.Journal of biomedical informatics · 2010Article
- Modeling return on investment for an electronic medical record system in Lilongwe, Malawi.Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIAArticle
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
objectivesTo evaluate the effectiveness of a personal digital assistant (PDA)-based system for collecting tuberculosis test results and to compare this new system to the previous paper-based system. The PDA- and paper-based systems were evaluated based on processing times, frequency of errors, and number of work-hours expended by data collectors.
methodsWe conducted a cluster randomized controlled trial in 93 health establishments in Peru. Baseline data were collected for 19 months. Districts (n=4) were then randomly assigned to intervention (PDA) or control (paper) groups, and further data were collected for 6 months. Comparisons were made between intervention and control districts and within-districts before and after the introduction of the intervention.
resultsThe PDA-based system had a significant effect on processing times (p<0.001) and errors (p=0.005). In the between-districts comparison, the median processing time for cultures was reduced from 23 to 8 days and for smears was reduced from 25 to 12 days. In that comparison, the proportion of cultures with delays >90 days was reduced from 9.2% to 0.1% and the number of errors was decreased by 57.1%. The intervention reduced the work-hours necessary to process results by 70% and was preferred by all users.
conclusionsA well-designed PDA-based system to collect data from institutions over a large, resource-poor area can significantly reduce delays, errors, and person-hours spent processing data.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.