TimmyCare: an electronic medical record for resource-poor environments

Abstract

Background: Research of electronic medical records (EMR) shows the minimum use of EMR systems by medical service providers in the developing world. Insufficient EMRs restrict the ability of service providers to manage patients' conditions, track patients' outcomes, and use or share data. Methods: To improve the quality of medical service provision, enhance data collection, and enable data-driven decision-making, Timmy Global Health created TimmyCare. Complete with an intuitive, web-based, localised user-interface, mainly customisable data gathering platform, cloud-based and encrypted data storage, and minimum hardware and technical requirements, TimmyCare can bring EMR technology to challenging areas of the developing world. TimmyCare has been tested in a variety of developing world environments, including in mobile clinics in the Amazon basin, locally run primary-care medical clinics in Ecuador and Guatemala, and in a rural health-care programme focused on migrants close to the border of Haiti and the Dominican Republic Findings: TimmyCare has improved service provision for roughly 14 000 patients from developing countries. The services has improved Timmy Global Health's ability to monitor patients' conditions, by provision of accessible patient histories; decreased patients' waiting time in Timmy Global Health's medical clinics (in some instances from 3 h to 1 h); and improved patients' follow-up by easy identification of patients with chronic or complex conditions. TimmyCare also enables collection and analysis of population health measurements, thus improving Timmy Global Health's ability to tailor service provision in response to data-backed trends. Interpretation: In view of TimmyCare's scalable, customisable, intuitive design, and the potential size of the need for EMR's in the developing world, TimmyCare could enhance service provision in a cost-effective and administratively efficient manner. Funding: Timmy Global Health.