Prescribing cotrimoxazole prophylactic therapy (CPT) before and after an electronic medical record system implementation in two selected hospitals in Malawi

Abstract

Opportunistic infections (OIs) have been identified as a leading cause of poor outcomes in the ARV therapy (ART) programme. In order to reduce OIs, the Malawi, MoH introduced routine prescription of cotrimoxazole preventive therapy (CPT) in 2005. The MoH also started scaling up a point-of-care electronic medical record (EMR) system in 2007 to improve monitoring and evaluation. This study had the following objectives: i) to quantify prescription of CPT before and after implementing EMR; ii) to compare the difference in CPT prescription before and after implementing EMR. A historically controlled study design was used to compare CPT prescriptions one year before, and one year after implementation of the EMR at two health facilities. The data indicated that there was a significant (P <0.001) decrease in CPT prescribing at one health facility and a significant increase in CPT prescription at another.