Texas public health officials find eMedCheck cuts screening time in half

Public health officials in Tarrant County, Texas recently used eMedCheck as part of their Hepatitis A vaccination clinic, and discovered the tool developed by Associate Professor Jeffrey Herrmann's (ME/ISR) research team cut their average screening time in half.

Tarrant County Public Health held a drive-thru clinic for free hepatitis A shots at Pennington Field Stadium in Bedford, Texas on June 20. The clinic was targeted to food handlers, first responders, day care workers, school personnel and those working in health care.

Pre-screening potential recipients at a mass vaccination clinic is important. But the task is time-consuming, rules can be confusing, and paper forms are not efficient. The Tarrant County staff decided to use eMedCheck v.3.1, an electronic medication screening form that can be run on a PDA device.

Herrmann's group developed and released this version of eMedCheck specifically for hepatitis A screening, which made it easy for Tarrant County public health officials to use the software in their clinic. With eMedCheck, the officials found the average screening time was about half as long as manual screening.

eMedCheck can be obtained free of charge by downloading a zip file that includes a user's guide, installation guide, medication screening form, and the software (which includes the application and a database). Instructions for downloading the software and installing it on a Palm PDA also are included.

Download eMedCheck here.

Published June 26, 2009