Improving Quality of Care and Health Impact through Innovative Electronic Medical System Technologies in Malawi under the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)

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Since 2004, CDC/PEPFAR have supported the Malawi Ministry of Health (MOH) to build a sustainable electronic medical record system (EMRS) to support provision of quality antiretroviral therapy (ART) services. Point of care EMRS ensure that providers have access to real time information and reminders to aid clinical decision making. So far, the EMRS has been installed in 121 high volume PEPFAR-supported sites primarily covering ART clinics; modules covering HIV testing services (HTS), prevention of mother to child transmission (PMTCT) services, pharmacy stock management, laboratory specimen ordering and result reporting have been installed in fewer sites. The EMRS is also working towards achieving real-time reporting functionality to meet the PEPFAR requirement of age and gender disaggregation reporting. By end of September 2019, the EMRS will have been expanded to a total of 261 PEPFAR-supported sites. In the next five years, priority will be given to sustaining and improving on the investments made so far: expanding EMRS to more sites, testing new technologies, building data use capacity and improving connectivity to ensure an efficient and reliable system. The aim of this NOFO is to rapidly scale up expanded EMRS to all PEPFAR-supported sites by the end of the funding period to maintain EMRS at existing sites, and to ensure EMRS software is updated in a regular and timely manner to align with updates to national guidelines, country policies, and changes in PEPFAR priorities.

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