Keep it simple: designing a user-centred digital information system to support chronic disease management in low/middle-income countries

Abstract

OBJECTIVE. Implement a user-centred digital health information system to facilitate rapidly and substantially increasing the number of patients treated for hypertension in low/middle-income countries.

METHODS. User-centred design of Simple, an offline-first app for mobile devices to record patient clinical visits and a web-based dashboard to monitor programme performance.

RESULTS. The Simple mobile application scaled rapidly over the past 4 years to reach more than 11 400 primary care facilities in four countries with over 3 million patients enrolled. Simple achieved median duration for new patient registration of 76 s (IQR 2 s) and follow-up visit entry of 13 s (IQR 1 s).

CONCLUSIONS. A fast, easy-to-use digital information system for hypertension programmes that accommodates healthcare worker time constraints by minimising data entry and focusing on key performance indicators can successfully reach scale in low-resource settings.