. Behjat Taheri; . Asefeh Haddadpoor; . Mahmood Mirkhalafzadeh; . Fariba Mazroei; . Pezhman Aghdak; . Mehran Nasri; . Gholamreza Bahrami
Volume 7, Issue 1 , March and April 2017, , Pages 1-6
Abstract
Background: Congenital hypothyroidism and phenylketonuria (PKU) are the most commoncause for preventable mental retardation in infants worldwide. Timely diagnosis and treatmentof these ...
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Background: Congenital hypothyroidism and phenylketonuria (PKU) are the most commoncause for preventable mental retardation in infants worldwide. Timely diagnosis and treatmentof these disorders can have lasting effects on the mental development of newborns. However,there are several problems at different stages of screening programs that along with imposingheavy costs can reduce the precision of the screening, increasing the chance of undiagnosedcases which in turn can have damaging consequences for the society. Therefore, given theseproblems and the importance of information systems in facilitating the management andimproving the quality of health care the aim of this study was to improve the screening processof hypothyroidism and PKU in infants with the help of electronic resources. Methods: Thecurrent study is a qualitative, action research designed to improve the quality of screening,services, performance, implementation effectiveness, and management of hypothyroidism andPKU screening program in Isfahan province. To this end, web‑based software was designed.Programming was carried out using Delphi.net software and used SQL Server 2008 for databasemanagement. Findings: Given the weaknesses, problems, and limitations of hypothyroidismand PKU screening program, and the importance of these diseases in a national scale, thisstudy resulted in design of hypothyroidism and PKU screening software for infants in Isfahanprovince. The inputs and outputs of the software were designed in three levels includingHealth Care Centers in charge of the screening program, provincial reference lab, and healthand treatment network of Isfahan province. Immediate registration of sample data at the timeand location of sampling, providing the provincial reference Laboratory and Health Centers ofdifferent eparchies with the ability to instantly observe, monitor, and follow‑up on the samplesat any moment, online verification of samples by reference lab, creating a daily schedule forreference lab, and receiving of the results from analysis equipment; and entering the resultsinto the database without the need for user input are among the features of this software.Conclusion: The implementation of hypothyroidism screening software led to an increase inthe quality and efficiency of the screening program; minimized the risk of human error in theprocess and solved many of the previous limitations of the screening program which werethe main goals for implementation of this software. The implementation of this software alsoresulted in improvement in precision and quality of services provided for these two diseasesand better accuracy and precision for datainputs by providing the possibility of enteringthe sample data at the place and time ofsampling which then resulted in the possibilityof management based on precise data and also helped develop a comprehensive databaseand improved the satisfaction of service recipients.
