Hospitals in Ghana to go paperless – Health Minister

Government is ready to take another giant stride in the migration to paperless system; this time within the health sector, Mr. Kwaku Agyeman Manu has disclosed.

Addressing a room filled with journalists at the bi-weekly ‘Meet the Press’ at the Ministry of Information, the Health Minister indicated that his outfit is developing a national digital centre and electronic medical records which will capture the data of patients replacing the use of folders at health centres.

“What we want to do is that we are taking computers across the entire operations of all our facilities in the country. So when you get to the OPD you’ll be registered on the system and wherever you move within the hospital, you’ll carry no folder. Your folders will be sitting on the gadgets that the doctors and the nurses and everybody will have; so when you’re registered they won’t give you a card to enter the consulting room. You go and meet a doctor there with an iPad, laptop or desktop and then he’ll open a folder for you and that folder becomes your folder for the rest of your life in all facilities when we are able to complete this process” the Minister explained.

Mr. Agyeman Manu also revealed that the system has already been piloted in the country, specifically 28 facilities starting from the Central region. He noted that it was recently deployed in the Komfo Anokye Hospital in the Ashanti Region and same would soon be applied at Korle Bu within the capital.

“…we have linked 28 facilities in Central region since last year and we’re now working in deploying the facility in Komfo Anokye and by the end of this month or early next month we will launch our deployment in Korle Bu. We are doing the teaching hospitals in the first phase and we’ll continue with the regional hospitals and the district hospitals. By year 3, I believe we’ll be working in the very marginal facilities in the CHP compounds and that will complete the whole process of the digitization of the health sector.” He added