e-IMCI


Every six seconds, a child dies unnecessarily. This plays out in low-income countries, where 10% of infants die in their first year, compared to 0.5% in wealthy countries. To address these health inequities, the World Health Organization, United Nations Children's Fund, and others have created the Integrated Management of Childhood Illness (IMCI) program.

Page of the IMCI chart booklet Targeted directly at reducing child mortality rates in low-income countries, IMCI is a multi-faceted evidence-based approach. At the core are a set of clinical guidelines, or medical algorithms, designed to guide health workers step-by-step through the classification and treatment of children from 0-5 years old. The program is currently implemented in over 80 countries worldwide. Research has shown that following IMCI leads to better health outcomes. The problem is that it is not commonly used. There are a number of reasons including: expense of training, lack of sufficient supervision and a tendency to adhere to protocols less rigorously over time.

Clinician using e-IMCI e-IMCI is a project to put IMCI onto mobile devices to aid clinicians. Preliminary results from a pilot study rural Tanzania are promising. We are partnering with Dimagi Inc., D-Tree International and the Ifakara Health Research and Development Centre among others to build and deploy the software. This is part of a bigger vision to put medical protocols on mobile devices.


Publications