Abstract:
Electronic Medical Records Systems (EMRs) improve the quality of
patient care and reduce medical errors. Nevertheless, their role in health data
indicator reporting performance is unclear. We assessed reporting completeness and
timeliness of HIV indicator data to the national aggregate reporting system, District
Health Information Software 2 (DHIS2) in Kenya. We compared the reporting
performance of facilities with and without EMRs implementation for the year 2013
as EMRs uptake was in progress. The comparative analysis involved 104 facilities
implemented with and 152 without KenyaEMR system on three HIV programmatic
areas. There were no statistically significant differences in performance regarding
reporting completeness and timeliness by facilities with or without EMRs (p-values
> 0.05 on all the three areas). The KenyaEMR system assessed in this study,
therefore, cannot be associated with the transformed performance in reporting health
indicators. This was probably due to the fact that the EMRs do not report
electronically to DHIS2. Additional analysis can be conducted to compare reporting
performance once data exchange functionality is fully established between
KenyaEMR and DHIS2 systems.