President Maitripala Sirisena recently presented the ‘National Productivity Award’ to Dompe e-hospital, for using ICT to improve productivity and quality of health services at hospitals in Sri Lanka.
The e-hospital pilot project was launched at the Dompe Government Hospital in 2011 with the technological and financial assistance of the ICT Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA).
With the current increase in the number of patients visiting Government hospitals, a severe overcrowding was observed in the Outpatient Departments (OPDs) of hospitals. This led to attention being drawn on the use of ICT for improving the quality and efficiency in the provision of hospital services. In light of this, an information management system called ‘The Hospital Health Information Management System’ (HHIMS) was introduced. This was a product of an ‘e-society grant’ given to the Kegalle District Health Services Director’s Office under the ‘partnership relief fund’ implemented through the ICTA’s e-society programme.
HHIMS enables the computerization of all information of patients visiting the hospital, including the patient’s condition, medicines prescribed and laboratory tests etc. Patients are issued with a card that consists of unique user ID. Through this system, when a patient make subsequent visits to the hospital it is not necessary for him/her to repeat providing information about themselves as the information had been provided on the first visit. The doctor is able to scan the bar code of the patient’s card and examine the history of the patient’s illness, treatment given, medical test reports, information about allergies and so on. This enables the doctor to make a more accurate diagnosis. In addition several other advantages also accrue from HHIMS. These include: reduction of time a patient is required to spend at the hospital, ease in drug stock control and the facility for retrieving from the system on various reports that are required. Similarly another important advantage of this system is the automatically generated warning to the relevant Medical Officer of Health when a notifiable disease is encountered.
ICTA Chairperson, Chitranganie Mubarak stated that “this system was developed by Sri Lankan Medical Professionals and their notable dedication lead to successfully implementing this project. The support we received from all those who were involved in this project is commendable.”
ICTA Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Muhunthan Canagey, said that “Sri Lanka has achieved a high ranking on several health indices. With the use of new tools like HHIMS the people of the country will benefit as customer service improves which would thereby eliminate waste and increase efficiency.”
.jpg)
