Gous Natasha, Nyaruhirira Alaine U, Cunningham Bradford, Macek Chris
Global Health, SystemOne, LLC, Johannesburg, South Africa.
Management Sciences for Health, Pretoria, South Africa.
Afr J Lab Med. 2020 Nov 18;9(2):1092. doi: 10.4102/ajlm.v9i2.1092. eCollection 2020.
Connectivity platforms collect a wealth of data from connected GeneXpert instruments, with the potential to provide valuable insights into the burden of disease and effectiveness of tuberculosis programmes. The challenge faced by many countries is a lack of training, analytical skills, and resources required to understand and translate this data into patient management and programme improvement.
We describe a novel training programme, the tuberculosis Data Fellowship, designed to build capacity in low- and middle- income countries for tuberculosis data analytics.
The programme consisted of classroom and remote training plus mentorship over a 12-month period. The focus was on skills development in Tableau software, followed by training in exploration, analysis, and interpretation of GeneXpert tuberculosis data across five key programme areas: patient services, programme monitoring, quality of testing, inventory management, and disease burden.
The programme was piloted in six countries (Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Mozambique) in July 2018 and Nigeria in September 2018; 20 participants completed the training. A number of key outputs have been achieved, such as improved instrument utilisation rates, decreased error rates, and improved instrument management.
The training programme empowers local tuberculosis programme staff to discover and fix critical inefficiencies, provides high-level technical and operational support to the tuberculosis programme, and provides a platform for continued sharing of insights and best practices between countries. It supports the notion that connectivity can increase efficiencies and clinical benefits with better data for decision making, if coupled with commensurate capacity building in data analysis and interpretation.
连接平台从联网的GeneXpert仪器收集大量数据，有潜力为疾病负担和结核病项目成效提供宝贵见解。许多国家面临的挑战是缺乏理解并将这些数据转化为患者管理和项目改进所需的培训、分析技能及资源。
我们描述了一个新颖的培训项目——结核病数据奖学金项目，旨在建设低收入和中等收入国家的结核病数据分析能力。
该项目为期12个月，包括课堂培训、远程培训及指导。重点是Tableau软件技能开发，随后是在五个关键项目领域对GeneXpert结核病数据进行探索、分析和解读的培训：患者服务、项目监测、检测质量、库存管理和疾病负担。
该项目于2018年7月在六个国家（孟加拉国、埃塞俄比亚、加纳、马拉维、莫桑比克）进行试点，并于2018年9月在尼日利亚试点；20名参与者完成了培训。已取得了一些关键成果，如提高了仪器利用率、降低了错误率以及改善了仪器管理。
该培训项目使当地结核病项目工作人员能够发现并纠正严重的低效问题，为结核病项目提供高水平的技术和运营支持，并为各国之间持续分享见解和最佳实践提供了一个平台。它支持这样一种观点，即如果与数据分析和解读方面相应的能力建设相结合，连接性可以通过更好的数据用于决策来提高效率和临床效益。
