Revenue monitoring suffers without IT

Accra, Aug. 27, GNA - Dr Kwaku Afriyie, Minister of Health on Wednesday described the revenue monitoring system of the health sector as weak and health institutions continued to lose huge sums of money through inappropriate record keeping.

He said the absence of an efficient Information Technology (IT) has led to the weakness and there was the need to deploy and effectively use information and communication technology that would facilitate skill transfer, service supervision and provide on line support at the periphery.

Dr. Afriyie said this in a speech read for him at the launch of MedicalPro Modular Software, by Pro Resolve Software Ghana Limited in partnership with the British government Accra.

MedicalPro is a software that provides an extensive range of modules to standardize the patient's medical data as well as upgrading the general database of the hospital.

The software enhances the workflow of the health sector in managing areas like patients medical history, stores inventory control, procurement, pharmacy and dispensary, laboratory, accounting and financial management and documentation thereby making it easy for supervision and regulation for efficiency.

The Minister, who expressed the joy of the introduction of the software said it would serve as a means of empowering patients to be able to seek health care and relate to the appropriate schemes of their choice.

He noted that over 40 per cent of the Ghanaian population seek health care from the private sector and the relationship between the private sector and that of government has been undermined by lack of information between the two sectors.

"The lack of such a collaboration have been the duplication and dissipation of efforts, lack of holistic planning and inefficient implementation of health programmes".

He called for an adequate regulation, control and integration to move the health sector forward along with the information technology. Mr Robin Gwynn, Acting British High Commissioner, said the commission and Pro Resolve have been working in partnership to help uplift the standard of the health care delivery in the country with the hope of extending their services to the rest of West Africa. Mr Kwasi Taylor, Country representative, Pro Resolve said it is the first step towards a five-year programme to the establishment of a national database to serve all hospitals including health care centers in the rural areas. 27 Aug. 03