Investigation of allocation and application of specific computers for reporting of infectious diseases in township and community hospitals in Xi'an

Objective The study was conducted to investigate the allocation and application conditions of computers in township and community hospitals in Xi'an.Methods Questionnaires were used to survey the information managers of the control center for infectious diseases and the staff in charge of infectious diseases reporting in hospitals.Results The equipped rate of computers in all the 180 township and community hospitals in Xi'an reached 84.44% and the rate of direct network reporting was over 85.00%.Broad-band connections were used in 95% hospitals for direct network reporting of diseases.There were 310 computers in the 137 investigated township and community hospitals,though only 24.84% of the computers were used for infectious disease reporting.Additionally,57.66% of the hospitals owned only one computer.Conclusion Imbalanced allocation of computers,such as insufficient number,distribution and application,was the deficiency for direct reporting of infectious diseases in some hospitals.