REGIONAL MORTALITY MONITORING FROM COVID-19
Introduction. At present, information on the mortality rate of the population is in many respects decisive in assessing the effectiveness of public health services. The software created by the health care of the Tula region within the framework of an international project implements all modern coding principles and ensures the accuracy of coding the causes of death. However, with the development of health informatization tools, the creation of regional networked health information systems and the emergence of new diseases, there was a need for its improvement. The research purpose is to substantiate ways to improve the regional information system using the example of the problems of monitoring mortality from COVID - 19. Materials and research methods. The article analyzes the regional mortality register of the Tula region and the regional health information system of the Tula region. According to data for 2020 and 2021 (January - May) of these information systems, an estimate of mortality from the new coronavirus infection COVID - 19 is given. Calculations to estimate the average duration of patients with the initial cause of death U07.1, U07.2 were carried out using a special program LeaMeSS. Auxiliary settlement operations were carried out by means of Access. Results and its discussion. The calculations showed the situation with an increase in mortality from COVID - 19 by 2.25 times in 2021 in the Tula region compared to 2020. This demonstrated the need to create a mechanism for the inclusion of new diseases in the system of automatic coding of multiple causes of death and correction of errors in the coding process by a medical specialist. The ways of improving the regional health information system are proposed by introducing a small - sized additional knowledge base and a coding mechanism with its help after the completion of work with the external module acme.exe. Conclusions. The feasibility of improving mortality monitoring was shown using the example of the new coronavirus infection COVID - 19. The proposed mechanism of interaction of information systems will make it possible to use the knowledge base of cause - and - effect relationships and the means of automatically determining the initial cause of death at the stage of entering into the network system, which will significantly increase the quality and reliability of coding for multiple causes of death.