Quezon City, Philippines  – National Telehealth Center (NTHC)’s homegrown electronic medical record (EMR) was presented before municipal, city, and provincial health officers of Region IV-A at the 1st CaLaBaRZon Health Officers’ Conference to inform them of recent developments in health information management and EMRs.

““Paper-based and manual recording and consolidation of health data are prone to human error,” reported Dr. Marie Irene Sy,  CHITS National Project Manager in her presentation of the state of the country’s health information system. According to Sy, this makes health information stale and irrelevant by the time it reaches its users.  CHITS or Community Health Information Tracking System, is the EMR developed by the University of the Philippines – Manila in 2004, and currently managed by the NTHC.

While automation addresses many of the inefficiencies of the country’s current health information system, the strength of health worker participation in EMR use, as well as participation in the broader goal of better information management, was underscored in the presentation.

“HIS (health information systems) is not only about ICT (information communications technology),” Sy underscored.

Coming from her seven years of experience in deploying CHITS, an EMR for government health facilities developed by NTHC, Sy recounted how CHITS help improved patient care in 10 of Pasay City health centers. By working side by side with CHITS development, doctors, nurses, and midwives became part of resolving the inefficiencies of recording and reporting health information.

Because CHITS transformed paper-based health records to digital form readily accessible for reports needed at different levels of health system, CHITS was said to have introduced a “new way of doing things” where there are less papers being used for recording patient information at the health center. More time is used for delivering health services.

CHITS integrates health data from the ground level and organizes it in a manner that health workers, city/municipal health officers, and even the Department of Health (DOH) could use it for decision making. It is compliant to the requirements of the Field Health Service Information Systems (FHIS), the national reporting system being used by DOH.

An innovation on health information reporting, CHITS has expanded into versions like mCHITS and rCHITS. mCHITS, the CHITS version being used to track pregnant mother who missed their visit to the health centers is currently deployed in Navotas while rCHITS, a version used to monitor key maternal health data for mayors and local chief executive were being used in Sto. Domingo, Albay, Gamay, Northern Samar, and Glan, Sarangani. Both are developed through multisector support.