Use of an electronic medical record to monitor efficacy of diabetes care in out-patients in a central hospital in Malawi: Patterns of glycaemic control and lessons learned

The Malawian health sector has a strong tradition of systematic data collection for monitoring and evaluation of large-scale services. A highly successful adapted Directly Observed Treatment, Short course “DOTS” framework, based on patient registers and paperbased mastercards was introduced to facilitate the management and monitoring of the scale up of antiretroviral therapy. Subsequently, a simple, touch-screen based electronic medical record system (EMRs) was effectively introduced at high burden ART sites. Based on this model, in 2010, a diabetes specific EMRs was introduced in the diabetes clinic at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital. In this paper we report on the first 3 years experience with the diabetes EMRs. We highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the diabetes EMRs and present data on glycaemic control recorded in the system.