Health information system for obstetric and neonatal healthcare monitoring: SISMater

Development and use of specific information systems are nowadays a priority to healthcare organizations. This interdisciplinary paper, between Medicine and Computer Science, comprises an exploratory survey of obstetric and neonatal assistance during the process of birth by focusing on clinical records. It also involves the development of a healthcare indicators dashboard and the implementation of an Obstetric Electronic Health Record. All these efforts aim to improve quality of healthcare assistance. This prototype has been installed within a Brazilian university hospital. The preliminary results of Maternal and Neonatal Indicators included 859 deliveries (from August to December 2012). The cesarean section rate was 36.4% (65.4% high-risk pregnancy). Among the perinatal indicators, the Apgar Score bellow seven in the 5th minute was 5.56% and 0.93% whenever considering only fetuses defined as compatible with life. Disclosure and discussion of these data proved to be able to contribute to researches and to management of an obstetric healthcare unit.