Trial reportBMC medical informatics and decision making2013
Using electronic technology to improve clinical care - results from a before-after cluster trial to evaluate assessment and classification of sick children according to Integrated Management of Childhood Illness (IMCI) protocol in Tanzania.
Trial report in BMC medical informatics and decision making, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to 2 registered trials, which are not on this map. Cited by 72 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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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.
Using mHealth Technology to Identify and Refer Surgical Site Infections in Rwanda
A Study to Evaluate the Effectiveness of e-IMCI Implementation Compared to Standard of Care for Sick Children Aged Under Five Years in Primary Health Care Clinics in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.
Who cites it
72 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- The effectiveness of mental health interventions involving non-specialists and digital technology in low-and middle-income countries - a systematic review.BMC public health · 2024Pooled it
- The contribution of non-malarial febrile illness co-infections to Plasmodium falciparum case counts in health facilities in sub-Saharan Africa.Malaria journal · 2019Pooled it
- Strengthening Delivery of Health Services Using Digital Devices.Global health, science and practice · 2018Pooled it
- Evidence on feasibility and effective use of mHealth strategies by frontline health workers in developing countries: systematic review.Tropical medicine & international health : TM & IH · 2015Pooled it
- Trial
- Electronic Integrated Management of Childhood Illness (eIMCI): a randomized controlled trial to evaluate an electronic clinical decision-making support system for management of sick children in primary health care facilities in South Africa.BMC health services research · 2024Trial
- A digital health algorithm to guide antibiotic prescription in pediatric outpatient care: a cluster randomized controlled trial.Nature medicine · 2024Trial
- The effect of electronic job aid assisted one-to-one counselling to support exclusive breastfeeding among 0-5-month-old infants in rural Bangladesh.Maternal & child nutrition · 2022Trial
- An Integrated eDiagnosis Approach (IeDA) versus standard IMCI for assessing and managing childhood illness in Burkina Faso: a stepped-wedge cluster randomised trial.BMC health services research · 2021Trial
- Ear biometrics for patient identification in global health: a field study to test the effectiveness of an image stabilization device in improving identification accuracy.BMC medical informatics and decision making · 2019Trial
- Training community healthcare workers on the use of information and communication technologies: a randomised controlled trial of traditional versus blended learning in Malawi, Africa.BMC medical education · 2018Trial
- Trial
- Can a community health worker administered postnatal checklist increase health-seeking behaviors and knowledge?: evidence from a randomized trial with a private maternity facility in Kiambu County, Kenya.BMC pregnancy and childbirth · 2016Trial
- Community-based malaria surveillance in Cambodia using a mobile reporting app for village malaria workers: An implementation case study.PLOS digital health · 2026Article
- Article
- Evaluation of a Scalable Design for a Pediatric Telemedicine and Medication Delivery Service: A Prospective Cohort Study in Haiti.The American journal of tropical medicine and hygiene · 2025Article
- medAL-suite: A software solution for creating and deploying complex clinical decision support algorithms.BMC medical informatics and decision making · 2025Article
- Development and implementation of a digital clinical decision support system to increase the quality of primary healthcare delivery in a refugee setting in Chad.BMC primary care · 2025Article
- ePOCT+ Rwanda: A Clinical Decision Support Algorithm For Managing Sick Children Below 15 Years of Age in Primary Healthcare Settings.Rwanda journal of medicine and health sciences · 2025Article
- Enhancing quality of health care delivered to under 5 children in Kibra informal settlement of Nairobi, Kenya, by using mHealth platform with electronic clinical decision support system.Oxford open digital health · 2025Article
12 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundPoor adherence to the Integrated Management of Childhood Illness (IMCI) protocol reduces the potential impact on under-five morbidity and mortality. Electronic technology could improve adherence; however there are few studies demonstrating the benefits of such technology in a resource-poor settings. This study estimates the impact of electronic technology on adherence to the IMCI protocols as compared to the current paper-based protocols in Tanzania.
methodsIn four districts in Tanzania, 18 clinics were randomly selected for inclusion. At each site, observers documented critical parts of the clinical assessment of children aged 2 months to 5 years. The first set of observations occurred during examination of children using paper-based IMCI (pIMCI) and the next set of observations occurred during examination using the electronic IMCI (eIMCI). Children were re-examined by an IMCI expert and the diagnoses were compared. A total of 1221 children (671 paper, 550 electronic) were observed.
resultsFor all ten critical IMCI items included in both systems, adherence to the protocol was greater for eIMCI than for pIMCI. The proportion assessed under pIMCI ranged from 61% to 98% compared to 92% to 100% under eIMCI (p < 0.05 for each of the ten assessment items).
conclusionsUse of electronic systems improved the completeness of assessment of children with acute illness in Tanzania. With the before-after nature of the design, potential for temporal confounding is the primary limitation. However, the data collection for both phases occurred over a short period (one month) and so temporal confounding was expected to be minimal. The results suggest that the use of electronic IMCI protocols can improve the completeness and consistency of clinical assessments and future studies will examine the long-term health and health systems impact of eIMCI.
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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.