Ghana Goes Digital With Healthcare Delivery

Accra, February 2, 2018//-In the wake of using modern information technology to address the hurdles in the health sector, the Ghana Health Service (GHS) has received 2,590 Samsung Android tablets with special inbuilt e-tracking software devices, which would go a long way to support the digitisation of Ghana’s District Health Information Management System (DHIMS-2) in the country.

This would help the facilitation of sharing information across the healthcare sector in general, and as well as ensure evidenced-based management decision making and to promote transparency and ensure accountability.

The Director-General of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr. Anthony Nsiah-Asare, upon receiving the devices from Samsung Electronics in Accra, said the gadgets would be deployed in all functional Community-Based Health Planning and Services (CHPS) zones in the Upper East, Volta and Eastern regions appropriately.

“The facility would be very useful to frontline health workers in capturing and processing of all data, ensure accuracy and timeliness in informing policy decisions, and aiding in budgeting,” Dr. Nsiah-Asare said.

, He noted that, the “Rollout of Tablet-Based e-Tracker” was a partnership agreement between the GHS, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Korean International Coorperation Agency (KOICA), Samsung, Evaluate for Health, and the Good Neighbours.

According to him, all they sought to achieve is to change the old way of doing things by moving away from manual register, to real-time tablet-based digital registry, which would strengthening the planning initiatives at the central level, enable tailored supervision and management at the district level, and reduce inefficiencies in data capture.

Dr. Nsiah-Asare lauded the partners and however, called for support from other organizations for an expansion of the project to other regions to completely replace the paper-based reporting systems.

Mr. Kelvin Ntiamoah Sarpong, who is the Head of Mobile at Samsung Electronics also explained that, the project fell under the company’s Corporate Citizenship Initiative,  believing that, technology has become the order of the day, by enhancing lives and also supports search and listing of people and upcoming events as well as others.

Mr. Kelvin said, the app supports the tracking of persons, captured information while being offline and then upload to the server when connectivity is effected.

Meanwhile, the Acting Chief of Mission at the US Embassy, Ms. Melinda Tabler-Stone said, accomplishing President Nana Addo’s “Ghana beyond Aid” fully, need to strengthen information systems which is very key with respect to informed decision-making, improve partner coordination as well as build country ownership.

“Similarly, the US Government is increasingly focusing on activities, which build on local capacity and ownership. Better management of health data would lead to improved response at the national level in addressing potential emergencies and epidemics.

This would enable the Government to invest in resources wisely and help facilitate long-term social and economic development,” Ms. Melinda noted.

By Sammy Adjei, africaneyerport.com

 

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