Health Informatics in Developing Countries: Systematic Review of Reviews. Contribution of the IMIA Working Group Health Informatics for Development.

OBJECTIVES:

An evidence-base is important for medicine and health informatics. Despite numerous publications showing the benefits of health informatics, the emergence of health information systems in developing countries has been slower than expected. The aim of this paper is to identify systematic reviews on the domain of health informatics in developing countries, and classify the different types of applications covered.

METHODS:

A systematic review of reviews was conducted. The literature search spanned the time period between 2000 and 2012 and included PubMed, EMBASE, CINAHL, Scopus, Cochrane Systematic Reviews, LILACS, and Google Scholar. The search term was 'systematic reviews of health informatics in developing countries', and transparent and systematic procedures were applied to limit bias at all stages.

RESULTS:

Of the 982 identified articles, only 10 met the inclusion criteria and one more article was added in a second manual search, resulting in a total of 11 systematic reviews for the analysis.

CONCLUSIONS:

Although it was difficult to find high quality resources on the selected domain, the best evidence available allowed us to generate this report and create an incipient review of the state of the art in health informatics in the developing countries. More studies will be needed to optimize the results.