Black Sea Tele Diab: building an information system for management of diabetes

The main objective of this work was to enable quality improvement of diabetes services through better monitoring of clinical care in countries of the Black Sea area. We have created a diabetes health record system based on the Good European Health Record (GEHR). Diabetes has served as a prototype for development of a model for chronic illness care. This architecture provides a common data structure for electronic health care records (EHCRs), taking into account ethical, legal, security and educational requirements. A wide range of data types (including laboratory data, photographs, bio-signals, etc.), created in many sources can be recorded. The system offers support for the process of clinical care and medical education. The BSTD (Black Sea Tele Diab) system was developed using a modular design and object-oriented method approach. The Patient Records function offers options for the management of the EHCRs (creation/correction/visualization), such as registration of a new patient and recording of his/her first basic information sheet; the recording of a new sheet; the correction/visualization of the sheet; the recording of data about the patient's death, etc. The System Administration function allows: the definition of the health care facility; the management of people who use the system or fill in the sheets; the management of passwords and access rights for the users; the management of units used for measurement; and the management of the interface of the system. The system is currently undergoing formal clinical evaluation in diabetes centers from Romania, Ukraine and Moldavia.