UAB researchers get $4 million from Gates Foundation.(University of Alabama at Birmingham )(Brief Article)

2002 MAR 7 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) researchers and the Zambian Ministry of Health have received a $4 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to develop a state-of-the-art, electronic obstetric and newborn medical record system in Lusaka, Zambia.

"The database-driven electronic record will serve a clinical care and research function, and should result in sustainable improvements in health for mothers and their infants in Zambia," said Dr. Robert Goldenberg, one of the UAB researchers.

The central idea behind the collaboration is that automated recording and assessment of prenatal care and computerized surveillance of birth outcomes will result in better individual patient care, as well as systematic improvements in obstetric and newborn outcomes.

The computer record system will be modeled after the famed OBAR system, developed by Goldenberg and other researchers in the 1970s for use in Jefferson County, Alabama. That electronic record, which continues to serve as the information backbone of UAB's current system of clinical care, has been fundamental to substantial improvements in pregnancy outcomes in Jefferson County and to UAB's emergence as a perinatal research center. It also was part of an effort to develop a statewide regional care system that included the delivery of prenatal care to every county and an organized referral system. Once the system was established, the state's infant mortality rate fell by ...