Countries worldwide rely on the World Health Organization (WHO)’s clinical guidelines to deliver evidence-based care. Yet in many countries, guidelines are paper-based, making adoption challenging. CREATE is leading an international consortium involved in the World Health Organization (WHO) landmark effort to accelerate the impact of clinical guidelines through digitization and interoperability.
“The WHO is trying to address the challenges of bringing to life in the digital era medical guidelines published in paper format,” says Dr. Garrett Mehl, Director a.i., Digital Health and Innovation Department of the World Health Organization. “We want to give countries a standardized way to move from paper to digital, supporting data sharing across linked systems. SMART guidelines introduce essential content and coding standards and map out the care protocols in a computable format, allowing for use in any digital system. The goal is to make it easier to implement digital approaches consistent with WHO guideline recommendations at a national scale, while still allowing adaptation to localized needs.”
To meet this challenge, CREATE had led an international consortium to create a digital adaptation kit for the WHO’s SMART guidelines for childhood immunizations. This consortium includes:
With healthcare experts in large-scale digital health interoperability, artificial intelligence, data sciences and software engineering CREATE is working in levels two and three of the WHO’s five-layer SMART guidelines methodology. Then, with expertise in healthcare software deployment in low- and middle-income countries, we integrated with IntelliSOFT and SantéSuite in level four to build products for countries to deploy in their hospitals and clinics.
In Canada, the SMART guidelines approach will make a difference in vaccination tracking, allowing governments to understand better and serve people who haven’t been able to access this basic health care tool.
“At Canada Health Infoway, our goal is to make health care more digital to facilitate faster, more seamless and secure information sharing,” says Shelagh Maloney, Executive Vice President, Engagement and Marketing. “Collaborating on this project with CREATE and our global partners has the potential of enabling better health outcomes in Canada as well.”
