Clinical decision support and tools to assist health care providers
The Practical Approach to Care Kit (PACK) programme is a comprehensive clinical practice aid that enables healthcare practitioners to diagnose and manage common conditions.
It covers 40 common symptoms and 20 conditions including cardiovascular disease, respiratory diseases, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, women’s health, and end-of-life care.
This 4 pillar programme empowers staff, improves primary care in lower-middle income countries.
Guidance: Integrated clinical decision support tool
Evidence-based training: educational outreach, adult education
Health systems change: Task-shifting & task sharing
Monitoring & evaluation: QIP, audits, research
The programme and handbook has been developed by the Knowledge Translation Unit, University of Cape Town Lung Institute - the latter with who we are now in partnership to expand its use in lower-middle income countries.
About PACK
PACK is updated annually to comply with local clinical policy, regulations and essential drug lists, and is translated where necessary.
It incorporates regular evidence updates from BMJ and other credible sources including WHO, to ensure that it is relevant and provides the latest best practice guidance.
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PACK implementation has been evaluated in 4 pragmatic RCT’s in South Africa and shown to deliver modest but consistent improvements across a range of outcomes and behaviours including: prescribing; appropriate referral of severe and complex cases; case detection of HIV2 and TB, and health care utilisation.
Its effect on TB case detection is substantial and reproducible, documented in all three of the trials in which it was measured.*
*Based on the summary of research findings for the implementation of PACK guidance.
“PACK is a game changer for our nurses.They used to spend their time doing very bureaucratic work and not seeing any patients, but now they are doing more clinical procedures, which is good for the population.” Ronaldo Zonta, General Practitioner, Brazil
Find out more
To find out more about the research findings or if want to take part in our initiative to help improve global health, please contact us today:
- Dr Tracy Eastman
KTU Director of International Development
- Email: teastman@bmj.com
Go to PACK