Interlinked Patient Monitoring Systems Developed for Country Adaptation

The World Health Organization (WHO) and partners, with support from MEASURE Evaluation, have updated and expanded WHO’s 2006 Patient Monitoring Guidelines for HIV Care and Antiretroviral Therapy to promote the design and use of interlinked longitudinal patient monitoring systems that facilitate patient tracking and referrals between HIV care and treatment programs and other services. The revised guidelines are referred to as the Three Interlinked Patient Monitoring Systems for HIV Care/ART, MCH/PMTCT and TB/HIV or 3IPMS.

“The tools in the 3IPMS conform to international standards and guidelines. Countries are encouraged to adapt the tools to meet national standards and guidelines to help facilities and care providers follow-up individual patients over time, follow-up groups of patients over time, and share patient information between different care providers, services, and facilities with the overarching objective of providing people living with HIV/AIDS with a continuum of care,” says Upama Khatri of MEASURE Evaluation. “These tools also facilitate the collection, reporting, and use of key global output and outcome level indicators by providing standards for recording, aggregating and reporting of data.”

As a first step in the roll-out of 3IPMS, MEASURE Evaluation helped coordinate and facilitate a 3IPMS workshop hosted by WHO in Addis Ababa, October 5-10. Participants included WHO HQ, regional and sub-regional staff, USAID staff from Kenya, Ethiopia, and Washington, and MEASURE Evaluation resident advisors from Nigeria, Rwanda, Mozambique, and Cote d’Iviore.

The document was presented at the HIV Implementers’ meeting in Namibia and is located on the WHO web site at http://www.who.int/hiv/pub/imai/PatientGuide/en/index.html.

Tools contained in 3IPMS include the following:

• Expanded minimum data set for HIV care and treatment, MCH/PMTCT, and TB/HIV
• Patient-held cards: HIV care and treatment card, maternal card, under-5 card
• Facility-held cards and records: HIV care and treatment card, TB treatment, labor and delivery records
• Cross-linked longitudinal registers: HIV care or “pre-ART” register, treatment or “ART” register, ANC register, labor and delivery register, HIV-exposed infant register, TB register
• Cross-sectional report for HIV care and treatment, MCH/PMTCT and TB/HIV
• Cohort report for treatment outcome monitoring

The tools in the 3IPMS promote longitudinal patient monitoring for care and treatment including monitoring survival of patients on ART, and have been designed to enhance programs’ ability to monitor the effectiveness of: coordinated efforts to reach PMTCT and MCH Millennium Development Goals, provision of HIV care and treatment services to infants and children, and routine TB screening and treatment in patients with HIV.

The 3IPMS forms booklet is available to countries for adaptation and implementation in order to develop strong, interlinked and interoperable systems for long-term patient follow-up and program monitoring.

Download Three Interlinked Patient Monitoring Systems for HIV care/ART, MCH/PMTCT and TB/HIV (1.26MB, pdf)