Tuberculosis Information Management
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TB Patient Management Project
Background
The Tuberculosis Information Management System (TIMS) is an
electronic system that was designed and developed by CDC to help TB
control programs better manage their TB data. However, the patient
management module of TIMS was never fully developed, and thus was
useful to some TB programs but inadequate for others. TIMS is now
being phased out, to be replaced for the most part by the National
Electronic Disease Surveillance System (NEDSS), yet state and local
programs still need a patient management component. The Patient
Management Project was started to address this need.
The TB Patient Management project started with three overarching
objectives:
1. Identify core TB patient management practices and program
evaluation activities across programs and document the functional
requirements they represent,
2. Use this information to develop criteria to assess and
evaluate existing information system options, and
3. Provide local and state TB control programs a means to use the
results of the project.
The challenges CDC and TB controllers encountered with TIMS
validated and reflected the difficulties for any federal agency to
develop an electronic “one-size-fits-all” TB patient management
system. Thus the TB Patient Management project was designed to
evaluate existing electronic patient management systems, not to
develop software.
The outcome of this project has been the development of a
Web-based assessment guide. The primary purpose of this guide is to
assist local and state TB control programs as they seek to select an
application that best fits local TB control practices. The first
section of the guide contains background material on many of the
aspects of information technology selection and procurement with
TB-specific examples. It includes a step-by-step guide to assist
organizations as they navigate the process of an evaluation process.
Section 2 consists of a tool that can be used to objectively
evaluate information systems using the criteria developed by the
project or with local modifications. The results of the evaluation
conducted earlier this year are available in section 3. These
results represent evaluation outcomes as of May 2004.
The guide is supported by the National Tuberculosis Controllers
Association and the Turning Point Program.
Tuberculosis Patient Management Project
Stakeholders
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Last Modified: 06/27/2008
Last Reviewed: 05/18/2008 Content Source: Division of Tuberculosis Elimination
National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention
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