Botswana Bound: students volunteer their services
Katie Ellias, WG'06
Issue date: 10/10/05 Section: Insider
For the past 20 years Dr. Dickenson has worked with HIV/AIDS in Africa and helped to establish the standard of care for the disease and its co-morbidities in Botswana and around the developing world. In her own clinic, which is primarily a family health practice, she treats not just HIV, but the whole individual, and their families as well. Equipped with Obstetrics/Gynecology, General surgery, speech therapists, occupational therapists, on-site laboratory services, and mental health counseling, the Surgery is a place where Botswana can receive high quality healthcare from well trained doctors in a much more private and less chaotic setting. Additionally, Dr. Dickenson is in the process of opening a separate "Wellness Center" where healthcare professionals (doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers) can come in for treatment and training for HIV/AIDS. One of the critical challenges in Botswana today is the severe shortage of physicians, many of whom are infected themselves, but unwilling to come for treatment in the same facilities as their own patients.
Given the physician shortage, the government has also realized the need for creative approaches to treatment. The government has begun to allow nurses to make drug prescriptions and treatment decisions for HIV patients. In order to ensure that these nurses have the proper tools and training, Wharton and the Entrepreneurial Research Center are in the process of conducting a pilot project at Independence Surgery of a new electronic medical records (EMR) technology that tracks HIV disease burden along with other patient lab results and current health conditions and uses a proprietary algorithm to calculate the appropriate drug treatment regimen for the patient. The hope is that the technology will allow both physician and non-physician healthcare workers to improve the quality of care for HIV patients in the area. Since beginning the pilot last spring, nearly 7,000 patients from the clinic have entered into the EMR to date. The data being captured could bring invaluable insight into the progression and treatment of the disease, according to Wharton's James Thompson.
Given the physician shortage, the government has also realized the need for creative approaches to treatment. The government has begun to allow nurses to make drug prescriptions and treatment decisions for HIV patients. In order to ensure that these nurses have the proper tools and training, Wharton and the Entrepreneurial Research Center are in the process of conducting a pilot project at Independence Surgery of a new electronic medical records (EMR) technology that tracks HIV disease burden along with other patient lab results and current health conditions and uses a proprietary algorithm to calculate the appropriate drug treatment regimen for the patient. The hope is that the technology will allow both physician and non-physician healthcare workers to improve the quality of care for HIV patients in the area. Since beginning the pilot last spring, nearly 7,000 patients from the clinic have entered into the EMR to date. The data being captured could bring invaluable insight into the progression and treatment of the disease, according to Wharton's James Thompson.