1. Consistency: Integrating an electronic information management system can significantly improve data consistency between sentinel sites and the National Public Health Laboratory (NPHL). In the current setup, discrepancies occur due to the manual nature of data entry at sentinel sites and electronic recording at NPHL. The electronic system would synchronize data in real time, reducing such inconsistencies. The direction of the change would be an increase in data consistency.
2. Timeliness: Integrating an electronic information management system could drastically improve the timeliness of data collection and sharing. In a manual system, there’s a time lag between when data is collected at the sentinel sites, sent to the NPHL, analyzed, and finally disseminated. An electronic system could automate these steps, allowing for real-time or near-real-time data transmission and analysis. Therefore, the direction of the change would be an improvement in timeliness, with faster data collection, analysis, and dissemination.