title: Why Patient Centered Care Coordination Is Important in Developing Countries? Contribution of the IMIA Health Informatics for Development Working Group.
abstract: Patient Centered Care Coordination (PCCC) focuses on the patient health care needs. PCCC involves the organization, the patients and their families, that must coordinate resources in order to accomplish the goals of PCCC. In developing countries, where disparities are frequent, PCCC could improve clinical outcomes, costs and patients satisfaction.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  the IMIA working group Health Informatics for Development analyzes the benefits, identifies the barriers and proposes strategies to reach PCCC.
  
  
  METHODS
  Discussions about PCCC emerged from a brief guide that posed questions about what is PCCC, why consider PCCC important, barriers to grow in this direction and ask about resources considered relevant in the topic.
  
  
  RESULTS
  PCCC encompasses a broad definition, includes physical, mental, socio-environmental and self care. Even benefits are proved, in developing countries the lack of a comprehensive and integrated healthcare network is one of the main barriers to reach this objective. Working hard to reach strong health policies, focus on patients, and optimizing the use of resources could improve the performance in the devolvement of PCCC programs. International collaboration could bring benefits. We believe information IT, and education in this field will play an important role in PCCC.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  PCCC in developing countries has the potential to improve quality of care. Education, IT, policies and cultural issues must be addressed in an international collaborative context in order to reach this goal.
authors.affiliation: Dr. Carlos Martín Otero, Departamento de Informática en Salud, Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires, E-mail: carlos.otero@hospitalitaliano.org.ar.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Otero
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Luna
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Marcelo
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Househ
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Mandirola
authors.forename: W
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Curioso
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Pazos
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Villalba
mesh_terms: D003906:Developing Countries; D006801:Humans; D008490:Medical Informatics; D018802:Patient-Centered Care
keywords: Patient centered care coordination; developing countries; health information system; information technology