The MEL team measures indicators essential to the improvement of eye care programs, including surgical outcomes, improvements in eye sight, tracking health worker training, and logging the number of surgeries our partners provide. The information is used by HCP and our partners to make our work more efficient and effective, all with the goal of delivering the highest quality care possible to the needlessly blind.
HCP has recently expanded its data capacity, bringing on MEL Specialists in Ethiopia and Ghana, and working closely with MEL staff at partner institutions in Nepal and Bhutan.
HCP MEL Manager Nick recently hosted a virtual training session with this wider team to kick off a number of new initiatives. The team discussed changes to data governance and management, the importance of maintaining patient privacy, a revamped patient consent process, new data collection protocols, and strategies to ensure data quality. The team is focused on testing a global data standard for cataract surgeries, and on rolling out uniform data collection practices at outreach events around the world.
The MEL staff meets once a month to plan data collection, troubleshoot challenges, celebrate successes, and lessons learned. By aligning our data collection processes between partner institutions in many countries, we are able to generate high quality data which allows us to identify and share best practices throughout our partner network. Lessons learned in one country can help partners elsewhere, so opening up dialogue between our partners is an important way that HCP supports improved training and health outcomes for the communities we serve.
