CHITS Shares Award with Health Workers After Winning as Best Health Market Innovation in RP

CHITS hailed as one of the four “Best Health Market Innovation Award” in RP from hundreds of creative projects on health care delivery and financing.

Makati, Philippines-The Community Health Information Tracking System (CHITS), the country’s first electronic medical record system for government health facilities, shares its triumph with public health workers upon winning a “Best Health Market Innovation Award” in last night’s Galing-Likha Kalusugan Awards.

Department of Health Secretary Enrique Ona, Presidential Sister Aurora Corazon Aquino-Abellada, Mr. Reiner Gloor, President of the Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Association of the Philippines, and Dr. Alejandro Herrin, Chair, Project Steering Committee of the Galing Likha Kalusugan Awards presented the award. Dr. Portia Fernandez-Marcelo, Director of UP Manila National Telehealth Center (NTHC), along with the CHITS team members Dr. Marie Irene Sy and Noel A. Bañez, RN received the award. In her acceptance speech, Dr. Marcelo emphasized the role of public health workers as the “real” champions in improving health care delivery through CHITS.

CHITS was given the award due to its significant contribution to improving health care delivery in government health centers. Nurses and midwives who usually record health data on paper were trained to use the system to generate timely reports for DOH national vertical health programs. With the persistence of its program implementers, delays for accessing of health data were minimized giving more time for health workers to give care to patients at the health center.

70 New Doctors Trained on Telemedicine Before Barrio Work

The 29th batch of DTTBs

Tagaytay City, Philippines- National Telehealth Center (NTHC) of the University of the Philippines Manila is preparing 70 new DOH Doctors to the Barrios (DTTBs) in using telemedicine applications in an effort to support their practice in doctorless communities in the countryside.

The 29th batch of DTTBs under the Doctors to the Barrios Program of the Department of Health (DOH) began their training last October 17 at the Development Academy of the Philippines Campus. They are officially enrolled in NTHC’s Certificate Course in eHealth and Telemedicine which is a part of the 30-million National Telehealth Service Program (NTSP) recently forged by the NTHC with the DOH. NTSP aims to help DTTBs handle patients in their assigned communities; including those that need specialty care. Currently, there are already 109 doctors – from Batanes to Zamboanga – enrolled in the NTSP. DTTBs are being taught how to do telereferrals to refer difficult to handle cases in 5th to 6thclass municipalities of the country. 26 of them will be deployed in the Mindanao while some will be assigned in Geographically Isolated and Disadvantaged Areas.