Government to introduce health information system

The government is to introduce an electronic health information system of patients that visit hospitals and health centres to improve health service delivery, state minister for health has said.

Dr Richard Nduhuura says this will also help for better planning. Opening a general ward at Kabuyanda Health Centre 4 recently, Nduhuura said that a study is being piloted in Isingiro District following the success story in Kabuyanda and Nyakitunda Sub Counties under Ruhiira Millennium Villages project (RMVP).

“If this is successful in the whole district, government plans are to extend it to the whole country and I congratulate the millennium villages’ project for having piloted it,” he said. Each patient visiting a health facility gives out information related to their medical history, bio-data, income status and any other relevant information that can help medical officials in monitoring and treating the patients. This is electronically stored and used at each visit.

The RMVP communications specialist, Shakila Bint Shiekh, says that the electronic data system has helped the project plan better and is used in decision making on top of helping the patients from keeping the medical forms in their homes and at times using them to wrap food among other items.

The practice these days, especially in lower health centres, is that patients are required to buy exercise books for the health workers to use as the patients’ medical records.

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs, the director of Colombia Earth Institute and special adviser to the UN Secretary General, is the brain-child of the MVP project and recently visited the millennium villages’ projects in Africa.

He observed that health is at the centre of human development. To ease the pressure on the six health centres, he promised to look into how to take up all health centres in the constituency of Isingiro South.