Focus: Phones for health initiative

Health systems in the country have been faced with inadequate medical Information from the field. Diseases are generally reported on paper forms which take long to reach the relevant health officials. These delays fortunately are soon to be phased out as soon possible. The Ministry of health is currently reviewing a proposed phone for health initiative that is aimed at harmonizing health services. With Phones-for-Health, it will be possible to track communicable and non-communicable diseases in the country. The initiative partners include MTN, Voxiva and others.Voxiva, a healthcare software provider, has developed a web- and mobile phone-based health information system TRACnet that it recommends for the ministry. It will be implemented in partnership with MTN. The proposed system allows for real-time reporting of health data from the field, giving the Ministry timely, precise data from its field workers. The ministry ICT Director Daniel Murenzi says, “There are over 60,000 Community health workers who are currently manually collecting key indicator data across the country. The proposed system is aimed at improving their communication.” The systems will allow Community health workers in the field to enter health data. Once entered, the data is analyzed by the system and immediately available to health authorities at multiple levels via the internet. “The developers and partners promise a GSM system that will synchronize Community health workers’ data into a central database system to improve efficiency and to facilitate reporting,” Murenzi said. “The first phase of the project is currently ongoing in Kirehe District and will be reviewed more by the ministry after sample tests. As for now, the project is not yet a product of the ministry.” In a review workshop last week, Health Minister, Dr Richard Sezibera, said that the system will allow more timely communication that is greatly needed among health workers in the country. “This will help meet the broader information needs of the country’s health sector by improving coordination and communication. Health workers have been demanding improved communication services and hence it could not have come at a better time,” Sizebera said. According to Steve Shyaka, a medical practitioner at the King Faisal referral hospital, this project is both timely and pertinent. He said the project will increase efficiency in health care. “The project will allow us to call and send data to health care workers in the field across the country. Our hospital is a referral hospital and hence we need to access information from field health workers especially when tracking new epidemics,” he said. The new system is expected to allow health workers subscribed to this technology to send monthly reports and make emergency calls at no cost as a national method of harmonizing health services. Shyaka pointed out that such as a system could be useful to doctors as well across the country. “We need each patient’s satisfactory clinical status and history reports and when this is absent it is not easy to deal with the ailment. The system promises to be more reliable than handwritten reports that don’t provide all necessary data.” He says that such an initiative would ensure that doctors easily communicate and consult from each other. “General medical practitioners from all over the country should be able to access specialists in any field of medicine when diagnosing their patients and in time a coordinated communication system could just be the answer,” Shyaka said. He also said that the Phones-for-Health project could benefit not only field health workers but it would also make it possible for practitioners to share and transfer information hence learning together for the better health for the people of Rwanda. The proposed system promises to bring in needed reliable efficient fast communication channels that will allow easier reporting and coordinated field study on any key health indicators hence improving health care in the country. Email pgathoni@gmail.com