Creating and sustaining a digital community of practice for quality improvement in South-East Asia during the COVID-19 pandemic

Introduction: Ensuring quality of care in Low and Middle Income countries (LMICs) is challenging. Despite the implementation of various quality improvement (QI) initiatives in public and private sectors, the sustenance of improvements continues to be a major challenge. A team of healthcare professionals in India developed a digital community of practice (dCoP) focusing on QI which now has global footprints.

Methodology: The dCoP was conceptualised as a multitiered structure and is operational online at www.nqocncop.org from August 2020 onwards. The platform hosts various activities related to the quality of care, including the development of new products, and involves different cadres of healthcare professionals from primary to tertiary care settings. The platform uses tracking indicators, including the cost of sustaining the dCoP to monitor the performance of the dCoP.

Result: Since its launch in 2020, dCoP has conducted over 130 activities using 13 tools with 25 940 registration and 13 681 participants. From April 2021, it has expanded to countries across the South-East Asia region and currently has participants from 53 countries across five continents. It has developed 20 products in four thematic areas for a targeted audience. dCoP is supporting mentoring of healthcare professionals from five countries in the South-East Asia region in their improvement journey. Acquiring new knowledge and improvement in their daily clinical practice has been reported by 93% and 80% of participants, respectively. The dCoP and its partners have facilitated the publication of nearly 40 articles in international journals.

Conclusion: This dCoP platform has become a repository of knowledge for healthcare professionals in the South-East Asia region. The current paper summarises the journey of this innovative dCoP in an LMIC setting for a wider global audience.