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Innovations in public health surveillance rolled out in Jordan

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JORDAN | 18 May 2015 A national program of public health surveillance is being implemented in 309 sites across Jordan by the Ministry of Health, with the support of  the World Health Organization (WHO) Jordan. The project was launched at national scale in April 2015 and more than 100 trainings are currently being held across Jordan to train public health officials and clinic staff in how to use the system.MoH using mobile tools

The innovative project to collect, analyse and report disease surveillance information using mobile tools in real time follows a successful pilot program in Jordan between May to December 2014.

Now, every hospital, prison, mental health facility and more than 80% of primary care and comprehensive centres across Jordan will now have access to the enhanced disease surveillance service.

The project introduces case-based, integrated disease surveillance of mental health, non-communicable disease and communicable disease and uses innovative mobile technologies for reporting and management of information. Clinicians report case based information from within the consultation using mobile tablets, making information available in real-time for inform decision-making. Suspected notifiable diseases are alerted by SMS and Email within one hour of reporting to inform outbreak investigation and response at the appropriate level of decision-making and electronic barcodes are used to link laboratory results to case reports. The system also provides decision support to the clinician, including access to best practice prescribing, clinical algorithms and international classification of disease codes.

The project, which builds on existing national and international surveillance standards, guidelines and case definitions, was made possible through the support of the Government of Kuwait. This is the first time mobile tools have been applied to national public health surveillance.