Development of an Innovative Strategy to Determine Functioning Attributed to Health Conditions in Low-resource Settings

Overview

Journal Digit Health

Specialty Medical Informatics

Date 2022 Dec 19

PMID 36532110

Authors

Maria Yvonne Charumbira

Karina Berner

Denric Blaauw

Quinette Abegail Louw

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Objectives: Rehabilitation is a health strategy that aims to reduce functioning problems. There is a lack of country-level data on the burden and type of functioning problems to inform service planning and management of patients' rehabilitation needs, particularly at primary care level in low-resource settings. Health researchers need an application that automates synthesis of data extracted from several peer-reviewed publications to determine the most prevalent functioning problems compared across several health states. This article describes the journey leading to the conceptualization and development of the application and compares the application's performance to a standard desktop program.

Methods: A descriptive case study approach was used to report on the following steps involved in the development of the web-based application: (i) preliminary literature review to assess the evidence gap of country-level data on functioning problems comparable across several health states; (ii) an initial attempt to perform data extraction and synthesis in Excel; (iii) design and development of ; (iv) piloting of the application; and (v) implementation of application with input data from South Africa and Zimbabwe.

Results: The application offers a feasible solution for synthesizing data from several peer-reviewed publications to provide information on context-specific, priority functioning problems at country level through the integrated global International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health Framework (ICF).

Conclusion: This bespoke innovation provides impetus for further development, profile comparison and shared information between countries to co-develop strategies which can strengthen rehabilitation service delivery.

Citing Articles

Functioning Problems Associated with Health Conditions with Greatest Disease Burden in South Africa: A Scoping Review.

Charumbira M, Berner K, Louw Q Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022; 19(23).

PMID: 36497710 PMC: 9735592. DOI: 10.3390/ijerph192315636.

References

Stucki G, Melvin J . The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health: a unifying model for the conceptual description of physical and rehabilitation medicine. J Rehabil Med. 2007; 39(4):286-92. DOI: 10.2340/16501977-0044. View

Dizon J, Grimmer K, Machingaidze S, Louw Q, Parker H . South African primary health care allied health clinical practice guidelines: the big picture. BMC Health Serv Res. 2018; 18(1):48. PMC: 5789688. DOI: 10.1186/s12913-018-2837-z. View

Kone Pefoyo A, Bronskill S, Gruneir A, Calzavara A, Thavorn K, Petrosyan Y . The increasing burden and complexity of multimorbidity. BMC Public Health. 2015; 15:415. PMC: 4415224. DOI: 10.1186/s12889-015-1733-2. View

Zanca J, Turkstra L, Chen C, Packel A, Ferraro M, Hart T . Advancing Rehabilitation Practice Through Improved Specification of Interventions. Arch Phys Med Rehabil. 2018; 100(1):164-171. DOI: 10.1016/j.apmr.2018.09.110. View

Gutenbrunner C, Bickenbach J, Melvin J, Lains J, Nugraha B . Strengthening health-related rehabilitation services at national levels. J Rehabil Med. 2017; 50(4):317-325. DOI: 10.2340/16501977-2217. View

Louw Q, Grimmer K, Berner K, Conradie T, Bedada D, Jesus T . Towards a needs-based design of the physical rehabilitation workforce in South Africa: trend analysis [1990-2017] and a 5-year forecasting for the most impactful health conditions based on global burden of disease estimates. BMC Public Health. 2021; 21(1):913. PMC: 8116643. DOI: 10.1186/s12889-021-10962-y. View

Liu X, Cruz Rivera S, Moher D, Calvert M, Denniston A . Reporting guidelines for clinical trial reports for interventions involving artificial intelligence: the CONSORT-AI extension. Lancet Digit Health. 2020; 2(10):e537-e548. PMC: 8183333. DOI: 10.1016/S2589-7500(20)30218-1. View

Jesus T, Landry M, Hoenig H . Global Need for Physical Rehabilitation: Systematic Analysis from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2019; 16(6). PMC: 6466363. DOI: 10.3390/ijerph16060980. View

Cieza A, Sabariego C, Bickenbach J, Chatterji S . Rethinking Disability. BMC Med. 2018; 16(1):14. PMC: 5785824. DOI: 10.1186/s12916-017-1002-6. View

10.

van Schalkwyk M, Bourek A, Kringos D, Siciliani L, Barry M, De Maeseneer J . The best person (or machine) for the job: Rethinking task shifting in healthcare. Health Policy. 2020; 124(12):1379-1386. DOI: 10.1016/j.healthpol.2020.08.008. View

11.

Aronoff N, Stellrecht E, Lyons A, Zafron M, Glogowski M, Grabowski J . Teaching evidence-based practice principles to prepare health professions students for an interprofessional learning experience. J Med Libr Assoc. 2017; 105(4):376-384. PMC: 5624427. DOI: 10.5195/jmla.2017.179. View

12.

Jacob T . The implementation of the ICF among Israeli rehabilitation centers--the case of physical therapy. Physiother Theory Pract. 2013; 29(7):536-46. DOI: 10.3109/09593985.2013.765935. View

13.

Cieza A, Causey K, Kamenov K, Wulf Hanson S, Chatterji S, Vos T . Global estimates of the need for rehabilitation based on the Global Burden of Disease study 2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019. Lancet. 2020; 396(10267):2006-2017. PMC: 7811204. DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(20)32340-0. View

14.

Morris L, Grimmer K, Twizeyemariya A, Coetzee M, Leibbrandt D, Louw Q . Health system challenges affecting rehabilitation services in South Africa. Disabil Rehabil. 2019; 43(6):877-883. DOI: 10.1080/09638288.2019.1641851. View

15.

Scheffler E, Visagie S, Schneider M . The impact of health service variables on healthcare access in a low resourced urban setting in the Western Cape, South Africa. Afr J Prim Health Care Fam Med. 2015; 7(1). PMC: 4656938. DOI: 10.4102/phcfm.v7i1.820. View

16.

Paraskevas K, de Borst G, Veith F . Why randomized controlled trials do not always reflect reality. J Vasc Surg. 2019; 70(2):607-614.e3. DOI: 10.1016/j.jvs.2019.01.052. View

17.

Singh R, Kucukdeveci A, Grabljevec K, Gray A . The role of Interdisciplinary Teams in Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine. J Rehabil Med. 2018; 50(8):673-678. DOI: 10.2340/16501977-2364. View

18.

Vos T, Flaxman A, Naghavi M, Lozano R, Michaud C, Ezzati M . Years lived with disability (YLDs) for 1160 sequelae of 289 diseases and injuries 1990-2010: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010. Lancet. 2012; 380(9859):2163-96. PMC: 6350784. DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(12)61729-2. View

19.

Harrison J, Weber S, Jakob R, Chute C . ICD-11: an international classification of diseases for the twenty-first century. BMC Med Inform Decis Mak. 2021; 21(Suppl 6):206. PMC: 8577172. DOI: 10.1186/s12911-021-01534-6. View

20.

Pillay M, Tiwari R, Kathard H, Chikte U . Sustainable workforce: South African Audiologists and Speech Therapists. Hum Resour Health. 2020; 18(1):47. PMC: 7329495. DOI: 10.1186/s12960-020-00488-6. View