Demonstration of an Electronic Clinical Decision Support Module for Dengue in Burkina Faso

The Integrated Management of Childhood Illness (IMCI) guideline has been implemented in Burkina Faso and is used across primary health facilities to assess children under the age of 5 years. A part from a rapid diagnostic test (RDT) for malaria, no other point of care in vitro diagnostic tests are widely used to improve disease diagnosis and inform treatment decisions. Dengue fever has been reported in Burkina Faso since 1925 and the recent epidemics in 2016 and 2017 have prompted the government to validate and deploy a clinical management algorithm for Dengue and a case reporting process to support surveillance for a targeted response.

The organisation Terre des hommes has digitalised IMCI and implemented the module through its Integrated electronic Diagnosis Approach (IeDA) programme across primary health care centers (PHCs) in the country with proven impact on clinical care and proven reduction in antibiotic prescriptions. Many recognize the need to update the IMCI guideline with current evidence. However this is challenging and may require large clinical trials. The advantage of electronic clinical decision support systems is plural: they improve quality of care through increased adherence and feedback information to the system; they strengthen surveillance systems by connecting relevant patient related data and provide geo-tagged coordinates for targeted responses; and they can become evidence-adaptive.

An electronic module of the Burkina Faso Dengue clinical management guideline accompanied with dengue rapid diagnostic tests has the potential to improve the diagnosis of non-malaria fevers in particular during "dengue seasons" and improve the efficiency of surveillance for this disease.

In this study, the investigators aim to assess the usability and the performance of the dengue module for patient management in primary health care facilities.