The eCHAM Project, managed by Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium (http://www.anthc.org) was funded in October 2010 to deliver an electronic version of the Community Health Aide Manual. The Alaska Community Health Aide (CHA) Program was developed in the 1950s in response to a number of health concerns including the tuberculosis epidemic, high infant mortality, and high rate of injuries in rura
l Alaska. The CHA/Ps work within the guidelines of the 2006 Alaska Community Health Aide/Practitioner Manual (CHAM), which outlines assessment and treatment protocols for treatment of patients. The eCHAM will improve patient care by giving CHA/Ps more rapid access to information hyperlinks, by facilitating efficient update of clinical information, and by giving the CHA/Ps and their patient's access to richer multimedia content. The eCHAM Project was funded in October 2010 by the Indian Health Service, through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The project delivers a web-based eCHAM; a mobile eCHAM application that can be used on an iPad, an eBook that can be used on any eReading device and a centralized document management system (DMS). The DMS will enable the CHAP Program to store and update all of the eCHAM content, and will allow the updating of all of the eCHAM products from this single source. The most challenging and time consuming task of the project has been converting the content of the four 14-pound CHAM books into something that can be used in multiple electronic formats. ANTHC's Health Information Technology Department manages this project, and it is governed by a steering committee made up of stakeholders from the CHA/P Program around the state and the Alaska Area Native Health Service and the project is scheduled to be completed by October 2013. Ownership and management of the eCHAM resources will be transferred to ANTHC's CHAP Statewide Services Department as part of a transition from project status to part of an operational program once the project is complete. The department will employ staff who are trained in the products and will provide support and training to the Alaska Tribal Health System. Additionally, the staff will be tasked with undertaking the first revisions using the new eCHAM document management system.
