Using a script file in developing a COVID-19 surveillance for acute respiratory infection and community acquired pneumonia cases in community hospitals, Nan Province

Abstract

The timeliness of data reporting affects the efficiency of implementing the surveillance system for respiratory and pneumonia patients to detect coronavirus 2019 patients who do not meet the disease investigation criteria of the Ministry of Public Health. Therefore, the research team used a research and development model to develop a surveillance reporting system by writing a software command set (MySQL script file), which is a command set for extracting disease surveillance data from the hospital information system of 14 community hospitals in Nan Province. Then the information was reported electronically into the disease surveillance system instead of the old system where the data were collected manually. The effectiveness of the developed system was evaluated by using mixed methods. The total of 8,620 visits of patients with respiratory illnesses and pneumonia from the disease surveillance system was included into the study and total of 30 officials involved in the surveillance system was recruited as the key informants for semi-structured interview. Quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and the effectiveness was compared using paired t-test and McNemar’s test. Content analysis was used for qualitative data. The results of the study indicated that 1) the developed system was user friendly and simple steps, and it had no adverse impacts on the routine work, 2) it provided stability in data and information reporting, 3) it offered fast data connection, 4) the system was well accepted by practitioners and they became more cooperative in sending data and information, and 5) the system ensures easy and fast data retrieval. As a result, the proportion of timely data reporting increased with statistical significance (p<0.001) from 46.67% to 99.17% of all weeks that must be reported and ATK examination coverage increased with statistical significance (p<0.001) from 17.85% to 71.20% of patients with respiratory infection and pneumonia in one week. Therefore, the Ministry of Public Health can adopt this MySQL script file to expand its use in other provincial health offices across the country to help lighten the workload of practitioners and work more easily, thus leading to more effective and efficient disease surveillance efforts under existing human resources.