Volume 1, Issue 2 Sultanate of Oman Ministry of Health Apr-Jun 2017 Inside this issue: Launching of the 1 e-surveillance Hand Hygiene Day 4 World Day for Safe- 7 ty and Health at Work Proposal for mater- 9 nal Tdap vaccine Measles-Rubella 10 surveillance: Q1 Launching of the e-Surveillance National ARI 11 The National Electronic Public Health nologies are providing a promising envi- surveillance: Q1 Surveillance System (NEPHSS) ronment for launching surveillance sys- tems in a digital platform and providing Q1 (Jan-Mar 2017) 12 – he Ministry of Health has initiated the real time data for action. Similarly the Communicable 15 T first steps towards a national elec- electronic real time data from environ- Disease Surveil- tronic surveillance (E-Surveillance) of dis- lance data ment monitoring agencies for climate, eases and events of public health concern water quality etc. are increasingly being by launching of the Electronic notification rd shared on the public domains. So also the system on 3 May 2017. E-surveillance has evolution of remote sensing systems com- Editorial Board been initiated with the main objective of bined with the geographical information Executive Editor: utilizing information technology tools to systems have been contributing to the Dr Seif Al Abri achieve the stated objectives of public public health surveillance systems. All Director General, DGDSC health surveillance addressing the current these informations from various sources and the future challenges. Editor: along with the disease data can be opti- Dr Shyam Bawikar Background mised into a single interoperable digital platform. The layers of Board of Directors The development in information help in (Departments) information technol- ‘Tarassud’ (e-Surveillance) interpretation of dis- Surveillance ogy and communica- ease data and public Communicable Diseases tion sectors have health management in Central Public Health opened several ave- context with environ- Laboratory nues that could be ment in far broader Infection Prevention and effectively utilised and efficient way than Control for enhancing the Environment and Occu- the traditional way. pational Health public health surveil- The public health lance functions “informatics” expert through use of elec- should be able to sup- Contributors: tronic health rec- port the public health Dr Padmamohan Kurup ords, interconnected Ms Najla Al Zadjali decisions at the local or Dr Fatma Al Hikmani record sharing plat- national level by facili- Dr Shyam Bawikar forms, and web tating the availability Dr Prakash Patel based applications ARI, EPI and IPC team of timely, relevant, and etc. Thus such tech- Public Health Bulleti n Page 2 high-quality information. In other words, public health surveillance systems into a such systems should always be able to pro- single multi layered IT platform. vide direction on methods for achieving Description of E-Notification system public health goals faster, and more effi- ciently at a lower cost by the integrated All the major hospitals have the electronic information technology. health records system (Al Shifa 3+) and are connected to the central data warehouse The Vision currently. There is an on-going ambitious A National Electronic Public Health Surveil- plan to connect all polyclinics and primary lance System (NEPHSS) is envisioned as a health care facilities in the country to the set of software applications, databases, network. The Al Shifa-3+ is an in-house elec- and data within intranet that allows users tronic patient records system developed by the Directorate General of Information Schematic layers of the surveillance Technology (DGIT) in the Ministry of Health. platform within NEPHSS In line with this the E-surveillance (Tarassud) “The objective is is also developed by the IT directorate and is to bring about the customized for public health surveillance functions and hierarchy in the country. It is sequential developed as a flexible web based system which enables it to be comparable to any replacement and similar surveillance software available in the integration of market and is significantly cheaper. The sys- tem is developed in such a way that it is the existing stand-alone most user friendly method to notify diseas- of computerized medical records to report es. The following are the simple steps: public health communicable diseases and other public The notifications are available as part of surveillance systems health events more efficiently as well as to the patient’s electronic health record. provide an IT platform to support web into a single multi The user just has to click open the rele- based public health surveillance functions vant notification form from drop down layered IT with capacity and scope of qualitative and list of electronic notifications. The form quantitative expansion in future. platform.” will fetch personal particulars and con- Objective of current phase tact information from the patient’s rec- ord. The option of automatic pop-up To bring about the sequential replacement once the specific diagnostic International and integration of existing stand-alone Classification of Diseases (ICD) code is 1. Users complete computerized medical record linked notifica- tion and submits 2. Data transferred to central server 3. Data are pushed to the web based system (Intranet only) at this phase 4. Data accessed using username and password by other stakeholders 5. Assigned administration level controls Volume 1, Issue 2 Page 3 entered is also available. ysis, and reporting process. The disease details are filled up by the 3. Improves reporting timeliness and com- notifying doctor through various pleteness of data dropdown/selection menus on the notifi- 4. Better feedback to data providers. cation embedded in Al Shifa 3+ system. 5. Improved efficiency of system mainte- Some fields in the form will be mandato- nance and improved documentation with ry such as immunization details for a vac- clear monitoring. cine-preventable disease. Way Forward This system has the option to generate an alert for notification transmitted to the Specific questions related to usage, ac- registered mobile phones/email to con- cess, interoperability, analysis, quality, cerned public health unit. validation, storage, privacy, security, The electronic notification will be accessi- and liability have come up and each are being addressed. ble to the data manager at the gover- To develop a web-enabled system se- norate and national level through differ- “The way forward is ent levels of permission online with a time cured and protected for use only by pre- gap of few hours. This is made available authorized personnel (Internet based). to have smartphone through a web based application current- Such an online system accessible and web based ly made available through MoH intranet through internet from anywhere in the applications to National and Regional Directorates of country will make available e-notification Disease Surveillance and Control. system to all health institutions including reporting by private and non-MoH governmental The regional Focal Points would access organizations with or without Al Shifa- different the password protected website and veri- 3+ system. fy/update/complete data entry online. It stakeholders that Developing tools to utilize optimally the is envisaged that up-to-date data on would enrich the communicable disease would be availa- electronic health records (Al Shifa-3+) ble to all concerned in real time thus ful- maintained by MoH that would tap big surveillance data for further analytics. filling the important criteria of an ideal database.” surveillance system. Smartphone applications and web based reporting by different stakeholders that Challenges would enrich the surveillance database and help in more meaningful analysis The following issues remain critical and also and predictions. pose challenges in the evolution of this initi- ative: 1. Change management 2. Designing surveillance, data collection, data management, analysis, interpreta- tion, dissemination. 3. High volume heterogeneous information that is distributed widely. 4. Data quality and changing systems 5. Data sharing and privacy issues Benefits of the System 1. Simplifies routine public health surveil- lance processes and add additional func- tionality that is not provided by the cur- rent systems. 2. Streamlines disease data collection, anal- Public Health Bulleti n Page 4 Hand Hygiene Project: Celebration of HH Day (Part-1) and hygiene is the act of cleaning Safer Care’ launched in 2005. The aim of H hands with the use of soap and wa- the campaign was to advance the goal of ter or with the use of alcohol-based hand maintaining a high global profile on the rub in order to remove soil, dirt and espe- importance of hand hygiene in health care. cially the microorganisms. Hand hygiene Thus globally to 'bring people together' in can prevent or minimize the spread of in- support of the hand hygiene improvement. fections. According to WHO every year Global hand hygiene day 2017 hundreds of millions of patients around the world are affected by the healthcare asso- This year the WHO theme for the hand ciated infections. The latest statistics indi- hygiene day was “Fight Antibiotic Re- cates that more than 3.5 million children all sistance – it’s in your hands”. This theme is over the world die due in harmony with the Booklet published on HH day 2017 national theme of “Role to transmission of “Every year on 5th of diseases like diar- model in hand hy- giene”. It focuses