The medAL-suite
“A digital solution for creating and deploying complex clinical decision support algorithms”
What is the medAL-suite?
- Code-free design of complex algorithms
- Intuitive user interface that follows normal consultation workflows
- Multi-algorithm, multi-version, multi-health facility configuration
- Optimized for low-power and low-connectivity settings
- 100% open-source
Implementation & impact
- Digital tool used in two large research studies
- Deployed in nearly 300 health facilities
- Tanzania
- Rwanda
- Kenya
- Senegal
- India
- In the Dynamic study
- Algorithm includes 150+ diagnoses for children aged 1 day to 14 years
- 130,000+ consultations to date
- 75% of cases completed in the application, resulting in reduced antibiotic prescription from 70% to 23%
130,000+
consultations to date
150+ diagnoses
for children aged 1 day to 14 years
50%+
antibiotic prescription reduction
The technologies
Create and publish clinical
decisions support algorithms
- Create variables and pre-defined syndromes (e.g., basic measurement, physical exam, background calculation or score, etc.)
- Construct decision trees using web-based drag-and-drop interface
- Assign treatments and managements to each diagnosis
- Incorporate learning content
- Allow health workers to accept or reject proposed diagnoses and drugs
Manage patients from medical
history to drug dosing
- Implement algorithm logic based on patient-specific inputs to determine the most appropriate diagnosis and treatment
- Follow the algorithm in a typical
consultation workflow; pause and resume consultations at any time - Compute drug dosage
- View information from past medical cases for a given patient, add new consultations
- View learning content (text, images, videos, sound clips)
Share cases among health
workers in a facility
- Use a local network to enable case sharing among all tablet users in the health facility
- Maintain a local database of patients without overloading tablet storage
- Send data to medAL-data when connected to the intern
- » medAL-hub‘s open source code on Bitbucket.
Deploy algorithms and
collect and manage data
- Create and manage health facilities, users, and electronic devices
- Manage algorithm versions assigned to each health facility
- Monitor system and data sync status
- Manage the patient database and export data
- Generate unique patient QR codes
- Manage duplicates and de-identification
- » medAL-data‘s open source code on Bitbucket.
User-friendly monitoring and mentorship dashboard
- Displays several quality-of-care and antimicrobial stewardship indicators (antibiotic prescription rate, completion of basic measurements, appropriate management of common illnesses)
- Automatically powered by data entered in medal-reader
- Provides feedback to support monitoring and mentorship activities
- User-friendly interface, co-developed with district health management teams
- » medAL-mentor leaflet
Disease surveillance and automated outbreak detection
- Monitors the prevalence of common paediatric syndromes (severe cases, malaria, fever without source, pneumonia, acute diarrhoea, malnutrition, anemia,…)
- Provided automated, near real-time outbreak detection
- Automatically powered by data entered into medal-reader, no manual reporting required
- User-centered design, co-developed with district health management teams
- » medAL-outbreak leaflet
A web adaptation of medAL-reader showcasing EMR system integration
- Connects with medAL-creator to display medical algorithms
- Applies algorithm logic based on patient-specific data to suggest appropriate diagnoses and treatments
- Follows the typical consultation workflow step by step
- Calculates drug dosage
- » medAL-reader Web’s open source code on Github