Smart Triage: Clinical Data - QI

This data is from the Smart Triage + QI: A digital triaging platform to improve quality of care for critically ill children study. Data collected for this study occurred from December 2021 to July 2023. <br> <br/><strong>Objective(s):</strong> This is a pre-post intervention study involving pediatric patients presenting to the study hospitals in seek of medical care for an acute illness. The purpose of this project was to implement Smart Triage + QI to improve the quality of care at four health care facilities in Uganda. The primary objective of the program is to enable healthcare workers to recognize the most urgent children more rapidly and allocate existing resources more efficiently. The second objective is to use the proactive processes of QI to identify and examine opportunities for ongoing improvement to strengthen the health system. The study involved two phases: (I) Baseline Period, and (II) Intervention Period. Phase II also involved a community sub-study at 1 site to identify key messaging for an appropriate methods for disseminating educational materials for VHTs and caregivers on Smart Triage. <br> <br /><strong>Data Description:</strong> Data was collected at the time of triage by trained study nurses using a custom-built mobile application. All data entered into the mobile application was stored an encrypted database. Data was uploaded directly from the mobile device to a Research Electronic Data Capture (REDCap) database hosted at the BC Children’s Hospital Research Institute (Vancouver, Canada). Outcomes were obtained from facility records or telephone follow-up at 7-10 days and the data was collected electronically. Starting in June 2022, outcomes were also collected via automated follow-up (SMS/WhatsApp) messages at one site. Time-specific outcomes were tracked using an RFID tagging system with study personnel as backup. <br> <br /><strong>Limitations:</strong> There is missing data and some variables were not collected at all sites. <br> <br /><strong>Ethics Declaration:</strong> This study was approved by the Makerere University Higher Degrees research and Ethics Committee (SPH-2021-41), the Uganda National Institute of Science and Technology (HS 1745ES).