Digitising clinical guidelines - lessons learned from the field

What have we learned from existing CDSS in the management of childhood illness in low and middle-income countries (LMICs)?

On 16 September, the Global Digital Heatlh Network (GDHN) hosted a webinar to share the results of work of the ad’hoc group on Digitizing Clinical Guidelines for the Management of Childhood Illness (IMCI) with their audience of experts and practitioners.

The working group brings together practitioners from humanitarian organisations (MSF, Terre des Hommes, ICRC), scientists (Swiss TPH, Unisanté), and policy actors (WHO) working on IMCI-related Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDSS). With the support and active facilitation of the GSPI, they have been conducting in 2020-2021 a comparative analysis of the development of the clinical algorithms of four different child-health focussed CDSS with a view to promote transparency and work towards best practices.

The GDHN webinar was the first occasion to share publicly the results of this work, highlight the recent work of the WHO in this field, and provide a platform for discussion of emerging learning and future trends in this field. The webinar brought together more than 100 participants from all over the world. Participants expressed enthusiasm towards this collaborative effort to share groundbreaking knowledge with the larger digital health community.

The panel  generated lively discussions around issues related to the reliability and sustainability of the tools, measures of their health outcomes, specific challenges related to emergency settings, the integrity of data, or the harmonisation of existing tools, among others. It highlighted further avenues for the multistakeholder reflexive process pioneered by the eIMCI ad’hoc working group, made even more timely with the launch of WHO Em Care programme which works towards promoting common standards for delivering CDSS in crisis settings.

Slides and recording of the meeting can be found on this webpage.

For more information or interest in this project, contact: frederique.guerin[at]unige.ch

Watch the recording of the panel below: