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Health Service and
Quality Management
Coordinating team:
PD Dr. med. Michael Marx
Helen Prytherch
Dr. Aurélia Souares
Participants
Prof. Albrecht Jahn*
Dr. med. Svetla Loukanova
Dr. med. Rainer Külker
Sylvia Sax
Christine Thayer
Angelika Pochanke, evaplan GmbH
Prof. Annelies Wilder-Smith*
Norma Lange-Tagaza
Sylvia Runge-Ranziger
Irmgard Marx
Prof. Dr. Joachim Szecsenyi
*Associated members
Ongoing projects – examples
QUALMAT project
Project Coordinator:
Rainer Sauerborn
Project Manager
: Svetla Loukanova
The QUALMAT research project (Quality
of maternal and prenatal care: bridging
the know-do gap) funded as part of the
7th framework programme of the Euro-
pean Union (grant agreement 22982) is
a collaboration between the Centre de
Recherche en Santé de Nouna (Burkina
Faso), Ghent University (Belgium), Univer-
sity of Heidelberg (Germany), Karolinska
Institute (Sweden), Muhimbili University of
Health and Allied Sciences (Tanzania), and
Navrongo Health Research Centre (Ghana).
The overall objective of this research is to
improve the motivation and performance of
health workers and ultimately the quality of
prenatal and maternal care services. The
intervention packages include the deve-
lopment and implementation of a system
of performance based incentives and a
computer-assisted clinical decision support
system (CDSS) based on WHO guidelines.
The interventions will be implemented from
the beginning of 2012 and will be evaluated
in a pre-post controlled study design in rural
Burkina Faso, Ghana and Tanzania between
2009-2014. The project includes over 30
scientists and nine PhD students.
The hypothesis of the overall QUALMAT
project is that there are deficits in the per-
formance of maternal and neonatal health
care providers that result in insufficient
outputs (eg. insufficient quality of patient
care) that go beyond the limitations that can
be readily explained by a lack of resources
and combine with other malfunctions in the
health system to hinder progress towards
health outcomes including the targets of
MDG 5. Motivation is believed to hold the
key to provider performance and improved
The Heidelberg health service and quali-
ty management group is a collaboration
between evaplan GmbH and the Institute of
Public Health at the University of Heidelberg.
As such it brings together consultants,
trainers and researchers working to improve
the quality of health care in developing
countries and Germany.