Digitalizing pediatric records at JFK Hospital in Monrovia, Liberia

Historically, Liberia has faced high child mortality rates. As the only tertiary care center in the country, John F. Kennedy Medical Center's pediatric department serves children in Monrovia and surrounding counties. While this pediatric department, including emergency department, outpatient department, wards and neonatal ICU serving, has a high volume of pediatric admission, it has very limited data on their patients such as ages, diagnoses, and mortality rates. 

Since 2019, Boston Children’s Hospital has been collaborating with JKF colleagues in the pediatrics department to digitize a database that can be accessed for quality improvement and research involving pediatric patients. With both in-person and weekly virtual meetings, this partnership works to ensure forms are being completed and data is being entered in a timely manner in orders to perform basic analytics on admission rates, common presenting diagnoses, and mortality rates in the department.

Due to this collaboration, JFK is able to provide weekly metrics on department admissions, common diagnoses and outcomes. 

Moving forward, the goal is to make the data more universally available to both attending and resident physicians to conduct research aimed at bettering health outcomes for our patient population. A data query form is currently in development to help physician researchers in developing research questions and initiating the IRB approval process for their research projects.