By digitizing the entire health system, the government wants to give digital identities to every patient to improve healthcare services.
Rwanda is moving to digitize its entire health system by 2024. The project was announced by the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Health, Zachee Iyakaremye (photo), at the launch of the 2022 Health Research and Policy Symposium last Tuesday (May 26). According to the official, the aim of the project is to give a digital identity to every patient.
“The action plan is to have all the patient information in one place and digitalized so that we do away with paperwork completely. [...] This will also be possible by combining the national identification with the medical identification so that a patient can have one identification number which they can use to get treatment in any health facility in the country,” he explained.
In its initial stage, the project will cost about US$12 million with anticipated total costs estimated to reach US$34.3 million in the long term. The health system digitization project aligns with the country’s One Health II strategic plan (2019-2024). In Rwanda, patients visiting health centers are still required to carry physical medical logbooks although more than 400 of its 513 health facilities have computers that can help store patient data. The government initiated the digitization of the medical data at the district, regional, and referral hospitals. However, there are still thousands of paper medical logbooks awaiting digitization.
For Jean Baptiste Byiringiro, chief digital officer at the Ministry of Health, digitization of the entire health system will solve that issue and many others. He announced the upcoming arrival of equipment essential for the digitization project as well as the construction of a data cloud, the installation of required equipment, and staff preparation.
Ruben Tchounyabe