Development of a Community Health Record System for Primary Healthcare Centres in Plateau State

Primary healthcare delivery in Nigeria's North Central zone is hampered by paper-based patient records, which are vulnerable to loss, damage, and duplication. This study develops a community health record system for primary healthcare centres (PHCs) in Plateau State, addressing gaps in patient data management at the grassroots health level. The system was built using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and a PHP backend connected to a MySQL database, making it deployable on low-specification hardware prevalent in rural PHCs. The software development lifecycle adopted is the incremental model, allowing modular feature releases suited to the PHC workflow. Core functionalities include patient registration, diagnosis records, drug dispensing logs, and immunisation tracking. System evaluation involved 40 healthcare workers at six PHCs across Jos North and Barkin Ladi local government areas, using structured questionnaires. Findings indicate that patient retrieval time dropped from an average of 14 minutes to under 2 minutes, and immunisation default rates declined after the SMS reminder feature was introduced. The study identifies poor ICT literacy among health workers as a key adoption barrier and recommends dedicated on-site training. The research contributes an affordable, lightweight health records solution scalable across Nigeria's network of over 30,000 PHCs, particularly in underserved North Central communities. Keywords: health records, primary healthcare, PHP, incremental model, Plateau State