The right digital platforms
We power public health programs with simple, digital platforms that can manage millions of health records—and provide actionable data to save millions of lives.
Challenge
Paper-based health records are too slow, cumbersome, and error-prone to support the best care for high blood pressure and other chronic conditions affecting millions of people.
Solution
Simple, digital platforms that are fast and easy to use make it possible to treat more patients wherever they seek care—while improving care delivery.
Impact
Real-time patient and program monitoring gives providers the tools to spot and fix issues—so more patients get their blood pressure under control.
What are the right digital platforms for blood pressure control?
Digital platforms, including electronic health records, play a critical role in improving patient care and making health programs successful, but only if they’re fast, easy and healthcare workers want to use them.
Why go digital?
Dramatically reduce admin time
Retain more patients in care with automated follow-ups
Efficiently manage very large groups of patients
Maintain longitudinal patient records across facilities
Improve monitoring and program quality
Improve patient outcomes
Highlights
Designing an Optimal Digital Tool for Hypertension and Other Long-term Treatment Programs
Step-by-step guidance for creating an effective digital tool for hypertension management and other chronic disease programs
DHIS 2 package for hypertension control programs
DHIS2 Tracker is a free, open-source health management data platform that program managers can use to monitor large-scale non-communicable disease (NCD) programs.
The Simple app manages more than 4 million patients—and health workers love it
The digital team at Resolve to Save Lives helped build the Simple app, which now treats more than 4 million patients in 4 countries
How the right digital platforms work
Why most systems don’t work |
What the best systems do |
| Designed for stakeholders, not users | Designed for healthcare workers |
| Ask for too much information | Minimal data entry |
| Too cumbersome | Fast and easy to use |
| Too complex | Simple dashboards focused only on key indicators |
There are many digital health platforms, but often healthcare workers don’t want to use them or use them incorrectly because they’re not designed with their needs and real-world workflows in mind.
We kept this in mind when developing the Simple app, which helps healthcare workers manage patients with high blood pressure and diabetes. We used user-centered design principles, working directly with healthcare workers to design and test the software.
Health records with legs
A typical paper system works only covers a single facility—where the patient first registered. If a patient seeks care anywhere else, they start over with a new health record. With a digital system, patients can seek care at different facilities and still keep a single, complete health record over time.
Streamlining administration
Digital platforms can also automate administrative tasks that are slow and labor-intensive with a paper-based system—like sending SMS reminders and compiling reports of overdue patients. This makes patient management easier for healthcare workers and improves patient retention.
Actionable data for health programs
You can’t manage what you can’t measure. A simple digital platform makes it easier for healthcare workers to capture basic patient data during a consult, and feed it into the HEARTS360 dashboard in real-time. This up-to-date information—displayed in a simple dashboard—helps program managers identify gaps in program performance, and test strategies to address them.
How we support digital solutions for blood pressure control
From our award-winning, user-centered app...
Our Simple app for managing large-scale hypertension and diabetes programs is used and loved by healthcare workers in more than 5,000 facilities—from district hospitals to primary care facilities and community clinics—to manage moe than 4 million blood pressure and diabetes patients.
...to the world's most popular health information system...
DHIS2 is the most widely used health information system in the world. We worked with the University of Oslo to make the DHIS2 Tracker app faster and easier for healthcare workers to use—optimizing it for use in busy primary care facilities managing thousands of patients with high blood pressure and diabetes. We also created a DHIS2 package for hypertension and diabetes that allows for quick data entry and easy patient management.
...and beyond
The features that make our Simple app effective can strengthen any electronic health record system. We built the HEARTS360 demo dashboard to help program and system managers visualize how their health information systems can be adapted to better monitor program progress and bring patients back to care. We also created a guide for developers—so they can build these features quickly.
