Bringing HIV Care closer to you

Since 1988, Decem­ber 1 has been des­ig­nat­ed as World AIDS Day, a day set aside to raise aware­ness of the AIDS pan­dem­ic brought on by the spread of HIV infec­tion and to remem­ber those who have lost their lives to the dis­ease.

World AIDS Day is a day of glob­al sol­i­dar­i­ty with peo­ple liv­ing with HIV and the com­mu­ni­ties most impact­ed by the virus. Addi­tion­al­ly, it serves as a chance to raise aware­ness of the ill­ness and lessen prej­u­dice against those liv­ing with HIV, as well as a day to remem­ber the many peo­ple who have lost their lives to the dis­ease.

In August 1987, two pub­lic infor­ma­tion offi­cers for the Glob­al Pro­gramme on AIDS at the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion in Gene­va came up with the idea for World AIDS Day. Since then, the day has been observed glob­al­ly with gath­er­ings, per­for­mances, march­es, and edu­ca­tion­al ini­tia­tives designed to spread knowl­edge of the ill­ness, encour­age the use of pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures, and lessen stig­ma asso­ci­at­ed with HIV.

At Intel­liSOFT, we rec­og­nize that  the HIV/AIDS pan­dem­ic has had a pro­found impact on the world, par­tic­u­lar­ly in sub-Saha­ran Africa. The World Health Orga­ni­za­tion esti­mates that 38.4 mil­lion peo­ple have HIV as of 2021. With this year’s theme encour­ag­ing equal access to essen­tial HIV treat­ment, we are com­mit­ted to doing our part in end­ing this pan­dem­ic. We have part­nered with var­i­ous orga­ni­za­tions on ini­tia­tives that aim to make HIV care and treat­ment acces­si­ble to every­one.

• Kenya Elec­tron­ic Med­ical Records Sys­tem (KenyaEMR)

In 2012, I‑TECH (Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton) sub­con­tract­ed Intel­liSOFT to offer exper­tise in par­tic­u­lar areas of mod­i­fy­ing Open­MRS for the Min­istry of Health in Kenya includ­ing cre­at­ing suit­able user inter­faces for the Kenya EMR. This was in line with a fun­da­men­tal pub­lic health approach which includes not only build­ing health sys­tems but also active­ly look­ing for tac­tics to pro­mote long-term health solu­tions.

The aim of the project was to improve the mon­i­tor­ing of HIV and TB patients receiv­ing care, track­ing med­i­cine inven­to­ries, nation­al reports and care and mon­i­tor­ing of HIV patients’ mater­nal health­care. 

• Juba Teach­ing and Refer­ral Hos­pi­tal in South Sudan

2019 saw strong col­lab­o­ra­tion between Intel­liSOFT and Intra­Health Inter­na­tion­al as they designed, cre­at­ed, and imple­ment­ed a local­ized Elec­tron­ic Med­ical Records (EMR) Sys­tem. This part­ner­ship with South Sudan EMR (SSEMR) assist­ed in coor­di­nat­ing and man­ag­ing the health­care require­ments of HIV-pos­i­tive patients in South Sudan. The Elec­tron­ic Med­ical Record (EMR) of choice was eHos­pi­tal, pow­ered by Bahm­ni (an Open-source Hos­pi­tal Sys­tem), and it was mod­i­fied to allow bet­ter HIV client man­age­ment, viral load track­ing, and appoint­ment man­age­ment.

• Ugan­da Elec­tron­ic Med­ical Records Sys­tem (Ugan­daEMR)

Intel­liSOFT Con­sult­ing was con­tract­ed in 2017 by Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia San Fran­cis­co (UCSF) through Mak­erere Uni­ver­si­ty of Pub­lic Health to devel­op and enhance Ugan­daEMR, a nation­al Elec­tron­ic Med­ical Records sys­tem to cap­ture and report HIV and HIV-relat­ed health pro­gramme data. Through time­ly and pre­cise data gath­er­ing, the project aimed to improve mon­i­tor­ing and sur­veil­lance of HIV-relat­ed pro­grams.

• Unit­ed States Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion Tech­ni­cal Assis­tance Project (CDC TAP)

Through a CDC-fund­ed project, the Cen­ter of Dig­i­tal and Data Excel­lence (CoDE), Intel­liSOFT is a part of a mech­a­nism to improve the glob­al health infor­ma­tion sys­tem. CoDE aims to strength­en its work in HIV/AIDS through the cre­ation of an Open­MRS HIV Ref­er­ence Imple­men­ta­tion (OHRI), the cen­tral­iza­tion of HIV/AIDS data to improve mean­ing­ful use of data, and the mod­ern­iza­tion of dig­i­tal health solu­tions through the use of data and dig­i­tal health stan­dards, train­ing, and capac­i­ty build­ing. This project is a step towards cre­at­ing a dig­i­tal pub­lic that address­es basic con­cerns in health today and in the future. The cre­ation of the essen­tial frame­works for pol­i­cy, gov­er­nance, and stan­dards is pro­ject­ed to have a pos­i­tive impact on the devel­op­ment of e‑Health ini­tia­tives, infor­ma­tion sys­tems, elec­tron­ic health infor­ma­tion exchanges (HIEs), and human resources for health.