A Web-Based Electronic Health Record Framework for ASHA Workers Using Python Flask and MySQL

Delivery of healthcare services in rural areas depends on frontline health workers who maintain, update and communicate patient records. Manual health record maintenance limit the efficient retrieval, updating and monitoring of patient related information from the healthcare perspective. This research work proposes a web based Electronic Health Record (EHR) framework that can aid Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA) workers in managing community healthcare information. The framework utilizes Python Flask as the application layer and MySQL as the relational database. A patient centric approach is adopted in the framework wherein patient record is the primary record including the healthcare visit record, vaccine record, health status record and medical report are recorded as events. Role-based access control is used for patient, ASHA worker, supervisor, zonal officer, district officer and administrator. The implementation was evaluated using operational parameters such as record entry time, entry error rate, report generation time, data completeness, report-access time, data retrieval time, system availability, and record access accuracy. The reported outcomes reveal record entry time as 2 minutes per record, entry error rate at 0.5%, report generation time as up to 5 seconds, data completeness of 99%, and system availability of 99.8%.