Obtaining a patient’s history is the first critical step in determining the patient’s illness. Most of the times, a good doctor swears by the fact, that a good history would be enough to make a differential diagnoses. The value of history taking of course will depend on the CHW’s ability to elicit relevant information. While not exactly arbitrary, broadly this exercise can be quite subjective and hence the emphasis on a protocol or evidence based approach toward diagnosis.
At Intelehealth, we have the required tools (clinical protocols) that will allow the CHW to obtain a relevant and detailed history. The Hx Guide Clinical history protocol is akin to a checklist. It is a set of instructions on what should be the next logical step, in this instance, what relevant detailed history should be asked.
On the Intelehealth app platform, the clinical protocols are developed in a way that allows us to approach the patient’s concerns in a patient centered and problem oriented fashion. The patient initiates the Hx Guide platform by describing a symptom. There are a total of 71 history taking protocols which include common symptoms like Abdo pain, cough cold, etc. For example for a review of Abdominal pain, the Hx Guide would prompt the following checklist question: Abdominal pain (tick), when did it start (days), where is the pain located (quadrant of the abdomen), does it radiate and where?, etc.
The CHW enters the common condition as presented by the patient and as per the prompts from the app continues to take the history further taking a complete detailed history.