ADD-RHD

Active Case Detection and Decentralized Dynamic Registry to Improve the Uptake of Rheumatic Heart Disease Secondary Prevention

Dramatic improvements in RHD outcomes could be achieved by getting more people living with RHD onto guideline directed care.

How can we develop and deploy innovative technologies to find more people living with RHD and keep more people living with RHD on guideline directed therapy?

ADD-RHD is a collection of three projects that are examining the ability of technology to improve diagnostics, care, and health system support of RHD in Uganda.

1

Automated-intelligence could provide a tool to quickly build capacity for RHD active case detection among primary healthcare nurses, ensuring more patients have the opportunity for early RHD diagnosis.

2

A dynamic mobile case management tool, the ACT Platform (Active Community Case Finding Tool), could provide a tool for scale up of the National RHD Registry and bring high quality, guideline directed care, closer to where patients live.

3

For these technologies to form part of a comprehensive National RHD Action Program, we will need to generate the investment case for scale and integration of these technologies into the National Healthcare System.

In 2018 the World Health Assembly passed a global resolution calling countries to reprioritize RHD on national health agendas. If successful, the technologies developed through ADD-RHD could provide the tools needed to deliver RHD care more broadly.

Continuous Improvement: The ACT software was co-developed with community, National, and International expert working groups. Here, a group of community healthcare workers provide feedback and suggestions to the research team to improve the platform and the user experience. 

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Patients with RHD currently being followed on the ACT National Registry in Uganda.

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Echos were reviewed by clinicians as part of the AI echo technology training and refinement process

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Members of the ACT design team, to develop, modify, and deploy the ACT software.

Project Sites: Gulu, Lira, and Kampala Districts

Project Dates: 2020-2024

Project Aims:

  1. Develop and deploy a dynamic decentralized cloud-based RHD platform into the public health system in Uganda to facilitate the uptake of secondary prevention.

  2. Refine and test a novel echocardiographic navigational guidance system for rapid image acquisition and improved access to RHD diagnosis.

  3. Characterize and remediate barriers to the adoption of ADD-RHD technologies in Uganda and other low-resource countries.

Guided Echos

The technology being tested by this project guides the user to move the echo probe to the optimal views and then auto-takes photos of these views so they can be shared with expert cardiologists for final diagnosis.

Improving the RHD Registry

As part of the effort to move patients from the existing RHD Registry to the ACT Platform Registry, research and clinical staff reviewed over 1000 patient profiles and followed-up with many of patients in specially-organized RHD clinics. 

Costing Surveys

To help quantify the cost of RHD in Uganda, our research team surveys healthcare workers about the clinic-based time and financial expenses related to RHD care delivery.