title: Innovations in Primary Health Care: the use of communications technology and information tools to support local management.
abstract: Social media has been used in different contexts as a way to streamline the flow of data and information for decision making. This has contributed to the issue of knowledge production in networks and the expansion of communication channels so that there is greater access to health services. This article describes the results of research done on 16 Information Technology and Communications Observatories in Health Care - OTICS Network in Rio - covering the Municipal Health Secretariat in Rio de Janeiro which supported the integration of primary health care and promoted the monitoring of health. It is a descriptive case study. The results relate to the support given to employees in training covering the dissemination of information, communication, training and information management in primary health care. This innovative means of communication in public health, with very little cost to the Unified Health System (SUS), allowed for a weekly registering of work processes for teams that worked in 193 primary health care units (APS) using blogs, whose total accesses reached the seven million mark in mid-2015. In the future there is a possibility that distance learning tools could be used to assist in training processes and in the continuing education of professionals in family health teams.
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Medicina da Família e Comunidade, Faculdade de Medicina, UFRJ, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brasil, felipepinto.rio@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Luiz Felipe
authors.initials: LF
authors.lastname: Pinto
authors.affiliation: Escola de Enfermagem, UFRGS, Porto Alegre, RS, Brasil.
authors.forename: Cristianne Maria Famer
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Rocha
mesh_terms: D057218:Blogging; D001938:Brazil; D003142:Communication; D003657:Decision Making; D005192:Family Health; D006297:Health Services Accessibility; D006801:Humans; D033181:Information Dissemination; D008490:Medical Informatics / Q000379:methods*; D010348:Patient Care Team / Q000458:organization & administration; D011320:Primary Health Care / Q000379:methods*; D011634:Public Health; D061108:Social Media