Haiti Relief Efforts

OMI Releases HIT Rescue Project Report to the United Nations

The OMI Haiti IT Rescue Project recently submitted its interim report to the United Nations and Pan American Health Organization.  The report details the current state of EMR in Haiti and proposes a future course of action.
The devastating January 12, 2010 earthquake in Haiti resulted in an estimated 250,000 deaths, 300,000 injuries, 1,000,000 displaced persons, over 2000 amputations and thousands of orphaned or unaccompanied children.  Haiti, too frequently neglected, is now the focus of major international relief efforts.

The Operational Medicine Institute (OMI) has been on the ground in the Dominican Republic and Haiti since day one.   Building upon strong local contacts in the Dominican government and medical communities, OMI was placed in an early position of managing the volunteer relief operations on the Dominican- Haiti border.  While coordinating the efforts of more than 20 international groups, the OMI teams identified critical operational gaps in patient tracking and disaster information management.  At the request of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and U.N. Cluster leadership in Santo Domingo, OMI initiated an aggressive series of programs to assess existing disaster IT systems and implement immediate stop gap solutions.

The results of these efforts are the Haiti Information Technology (HIT) Rescue Program and the Comprehensive Amputee Identification and Registration (CAIR) Consortium.

Haiti Information Technology (HIT) Rescue Program

The HIT Rescue program was implemented to compare existing disaster health information systems, critical assess capabilities and limitations, deploy an immediate stop gap solution, and catalyze the development of a robust interoperable system that is scalable to the entire relief effort.  With the help of tremendous volunteers and generous donations of time and money, the HIT Rescue has:

  1. Registered and provided unique patient identification bands to over 300 patients
  2. Created a registration and tracking system for the following high risk patients:
    1. Unaccompanied minors (24 placed into Child Protection Programs)
    2. Amputees (30 patients' information relayed to the UN Subcluster on Disabilities)
    3. Patients with external fixators (26 identified with critical operative data captured)
    4. Pregnant women (6 early pregnancy patients identified and referred to the OB service for counseling, education and pre natal care)

The HIT Rescue Project continues to provide critical support for ongoing relief operations.  The project is still in Phase 1 operations-  performing critical assessment of existing platforms and conducting a field trial of iChart system at Fond Parisien while providing the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative with an immediate health information technology solution for duration of trial. 

Check the OMI blog for more up to date information.

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