Awareness about Comprehensive Capacity and Patient Management Tool(CARE)

CARE is a comprehensive capacity and patient management tool, built specifically for disaster management purposes.

 It is a web-based application hosted at  https://gdc.coronasafe.network

 Credentials to login to CARE Platform can be accessed from application dashboard (https://gdc.coronasafe.network) once you complete your application process and gets onboarded.

 

It has dedicated features for COVID testing, inventory management, teleconsultation, etc. It keeps the digital record of a patient's health and enables treatment across different healthcare facilities.

 It also allows the state/ district administrators to have a birds-eye view of the health infrastructure at their disposal through smart dashboards and reports. Health being one of the key elements of disaster management, this tool does a good job at delivering healthcare with decentralized control. The asset management modules also helps in keeping track of the requirement from the field and ensuring effective supply of essentials.

 

Care is open-source software with an MIT license.

Open-Source Software:

The entire code base of this application is available to the public. The software that forms CARE is developed on an online portal called GitHub that hosts open-source software so that engineers from all across the world may view the code base of the software and contribute towards the development of the same.

MIT License:

This is a license that explicitly allows anyone to use the code-base of the software in whatever way they deem fit. Any person could copy the code, modify it, reproduce it or do any such action without any consent from the developers of the code base.

What does this mean?

This means that it is absolutely free for anyone to utilize the software. Since the software is built through contributions from volunteers it is and shall always remain free for use.

It is truly a piece of technology that is built BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE!!!

Why is it required?

Capacity Management

The Corona Pandemic has brought to limelight the shortfalls and limitations within our healthcare systems. One of the major shortfalls in our healthcare systems is that the state administrators or decision-makers are blind. Critical information about bed availability, oxygen availability or stock of drugs, etc. is not available in a user-friendly manner anywhere. There is no central or nodal agency that collects real-time data on usage and demand for healthcare assets and services.

CARE system is a platform that makes available real-time data of all subsets within the healthcare system of any identified location. This makes the management of assets within a hospital easier at the same time empowering the administrators and decision-makers to make better-informed decisions.

Patient Management

Our public healthcare system runs on pen and paper. This leads to a multitude of issues like

• Data lose
• Wastage of time
• Reporting becomes tedious
• Analysis of large data becomes impossible
• Communication of information is not efficient
• Large manpower required for data collection and processing

With the digital patient management tool, the treatment given to patients are improved because:

• Patient Data is securely stored
• Patient gets continued care across different facilities because of seamless data sharing
• Close and effective supervision from the administration
• Patient also gets better access to their own medical records
• Fetching data is quicker, easier and more accurate.

How to Register a facility?

Go to https://gdc.coronasafe.network/ on your browser.

1. After log-in, click on "Create new facility"
2. Fill out the form. You will see the following fields

• Facility Type- Choose from the various types of facilities from the drop-down menu
• Facility Name- Name of your facility in full
• State
• District
• Locale Body- Locale body within which the facility is located in
• Address- Full and correct address of the facility
• Emergency Contact Number- phone number of the Nodal person for the facility
• Oxygen Capacity in liters- If your facility has oxygen storage, mention the capacity in liters. If your facility has no capacity for oxygen storage, leave this field blank.
• Location- you may pin the exact location of your facility using the "Pin tool" in the centre. The Latitude and Longitude of the facility then automatically appear in the field.

1. Click on "Save Facility"
2. You will see a notification on the top right corner of the screen confirming that the new facility has been created.
3. To edit your facility details, you can log-in, enter the Facility Dashboard by clicking "View Facility". Here, on the top right corner, you can see the option to "Update Facility Details".

User Levels in CARE

CARE was initially deployed in Ernakulam district of Kerala where the officials of the National Health Mission and the Department of Health Services, Kerala depend on it for managing the large number of COVID patients that they have. The tool was later deployed across 5 states and is in the process of deployment in 8 more states.

As of 03rd February, 2022, the system has managed over 3.5 Lac patients and shifted over 1.2 Lac patients between different health facilities within the district.

There are various levels of Users within CARE:

• Volunteer: A volunteer that is linked to a facility has access to view all information saved within the facility but cannot edit it.

• Pharmacist: A Pharmacist that is linked to a facility has access to view all patient and facility information saved within the facility but cannot edit it.

• Staff: This is the staff (data entry/ administrator) within a facility. The staff has access to all the patient details within the facility and may amend or add more information.

• Staff (Read-Only): This is the staff (data entry/ administrator) within a facility. The staff has access to all the patient details within the facility but cannot amend or add more information.

• Doctor: The doctor, if linked to a facility has full access to all patient information within the facility. Only individual patients may also be linked to the doctor for tele-consultation or specialist consultation. In that case, the doctor has access to the records of only that particular patient.

• Local body Admin: The Local body admin can see the list of positive cases in a day within their local body (Panchayat, municipality, or corporation). If they are linked to a facility they have full access to all information of the patient within the facility.

• Ward Admin: The ward admin can see the list of positive cases in a day within their ward in the external result module. If they are linked to a facility they have full access to all information of the patient within the facility. They may also add/edit patient information within the facility.

• District Admin: The district admin has full access to all facilities registered within the district and all patients within those facilities.

• District (Read-Only) Admin: The district admin has full access to view information of all facilities registered within the district and all patients within those facilities. But no edit permission is given.

• District Lab Admin: Can view and edit all lab information and all sample details within the district

• State Admin: The state admin has full access to all facilities registered within the state and all patients within each facility.

• State (Read-Only) Admin: This user can see all facilities and patients registered in the state but cannot edit the information.

• State Lab Admin: Can view and edit all lab information and all sample details within the state

WHAT IS THE FUNCTION OF A SHIFTING APPROVAL FACILITY?

The function of a shifting approving facility is to enable all shifting of patients within its jurisdiction. It is the shifting approving facility that triggers all shifting requests, allots beds, coordinates in ambulance mobilization and also takes care of the entire data transfer and coordination to ensure a patient is smoothly from home to a hospital or between different hospitals.

WHO IS A VOLUNTEER?

A volunteer could be any person, may not necessarily be a qualified caregiver like a doctor or a nurse, but an active member of the community, or even a friend or relative who wants to support the patient by monitoring his data, giving counselling or simply monitoring the health condition.

How to assign volunteer to a patient.

1. Log into https://gdc.coronasafe.network/
2. Log-in using your username and password
3. Click on "Patient" tab.
4. Click on Patient Name.
5. Scroll down, click on "Assign to a volunteer" button on the right side of screen
6. A pop-up screen will appear, click on "Assign a volunteer"
7. Type the name of volunteer to be assigned. Select the volunteer from the drop down and click "Submit" button.
8. A notification will be designed on the top of patient card that the volunteer is assigned to the patient.

Once a volunteer is assigned to a patient, the volunteer, upon logging in will be able to see all the details to that patient. He/she will receive regular updates on the status of the patient.

The information collected from each facility on their Capacity, bed availability, bed occupancy etc. is aggregated to form a smart and intuitive dashboard operating at district level.