Open AccessScreening of patients with chronic medical disorders in the outpatient department for depression using handheld computers as interface and patient health questionnaire-9 as a tool
Author(s) -
Vaibhav Ingle,
Ijya Pandey,
Akash Ranjan Singh,
Abhijit Pakhare,
Sanjeev Kumar
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
international journal of applied and basic medical research/international journal of applied and basic medical research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2248-9606
pISSN - 2229-516X
DOI - 10.4103/2229-516x.205809
Subject(s) - depression (economics) , mobile device , medicine , interface (matter) , outpatient clinic , medical emergency , computer science , world wide web , operating system , bubble , maximum bubble pressure method , economics , macroeconomics
Depression, especially in concurrence with chronic medical disorders, is highly prevalent worldwide. An average between 9.3% and 23% of patients with one or more chronic disease have co-morbid depression. This comorbid depression has the worst health scores of all the disease states. Despite this, patients with chronic medical disorders are not commonly screened for depression. Lack of objective screening by health-care providers as well as lack of infrastructure (time/space/personnel) probably contributes to gross underdiagnosis of depression. This issue can be addressed using short objective depression screening score (Patient Health Questionnaire-9 [PHQ-9]) (validated in native languages, e.g., Hindi) and paperless self-administered interface on handheld computer (tablet), which is the objective of the study.