Improving cause of death certification in the Philippines: implementation of an electronic verbal autopsy decision support tool (SmartVA auto-analyse) to aid physician diagnoses of out-of-facility deaths.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The majority of deaths in the Philippines occur out-of-facility and require a medical certificate of cause of death by Municipal Health Officers (MHOs) for burial. MHOs lack a standardised certification process for out-of-facility deaths and when no medical records are available, certify a high proportion of ill-defined causes of death. We aimed to develop and introduce SmartVA Auto-Analyse, a verbal autopsy (VA) based electronic decision support tool in order to assist the MHOs in certifying out-of-facility deaths.

Method

We conducted a stakeholder consultation, process mapping and a pre-test to assess feasibility and acceptability of SmartVA Auto-Analyse. MHOs were first asked to conduct an open-ended interview from the family members of the deceased, and if the

SUBMITTER: Joshi R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7986549 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature