We have been talking a lot about the digital future and the paradigm shift that has taken place in healthcare that sees us looking towards having technology as a major part of the system for the benefit of patients, caregivers and society at large. In fact, many strides have been made towards this in many countries, Jamaica included. We are now in the process of starting the groundwork for full digitisation of some of our public hospitals and health centres.
Jamaica began its hospital digitisation journey less than a decade ago with the University Hospital of the West Indies. At that time, they saw the economic and efficiency benefits of such a move. Increasingly, more hospitals worldwide have been on a similar journey, and the ones that have gone fully digital have been investing more to improve how they offer services to patients and other clients.
Jamaica is no stranger to electronic dispensing of prescriptions. The National Health Fund has put in place a Pharmacy Information Management System in their Drug Serv pharmacies, including those at several public hospitals across the island. The University of the West Indies is very far ahead in completely implementing their Hospital Information Management System and, within that, the pharmacy module, which is already in use and allows for the ability to digitally conduct all pharmacy-related activities from prescribing to dispensing and between that inventory and stock management.
BIOMARKERS HAVE long been used in healthcare as a diagnostic and treatment aid. In addition, biomarkers such as those used to determine the probability of disease presence or development based on deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) have been used as a means of taking preventive action, by predicting disease progression and possible response to treatment. In this way, a treatment model can be developed for the patient even before symptoms begin.
The electronic health record (EHR) offers a plethora of opportunities for digitised healthcare management. Imagine if there was a system where a doctor can get an alert to warn that a patient may be close to a life-threatening condition, giving him/her enough time to respond to save that patient before it is too late. With the increasing implementation of electronic systems, this no longer has to be imagined. It is possible today. Many healthcare organisations have been taking advantage of this feature in their electronic heath management systems.
JAMAICA IS on the cusp of a digital data revolution in healthcare. I was recently at The University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI) where my company is implementing the Health Information Management System (HIMS). I was heartened by the enthusiasm of the health workers there when Minister of Health and Wellness Dr Christopher Tufton and his team toured the facility to see the progress of digitisation. I was even more pleased to learn that he, too, was excited by what he saw and had plans to fully digitise public health facilities – both hospitals and health centres.
For years, we have been hearing of the inability of the Government and researchers to get adequate information on cancer in Jamaica.
Sure, a registry exists, but the information it contains is apparently only for Kingston and St Andrew. That, obviously, cannot be a sufficient representation of the reality in Jamaica.
With the ever-increasing incidence of non-communicable diseases including cancer, accurate data is important for the Government and others to determine the best interventions, especially given the limited resources that exist in the health sector.
Mobile money has been hailed as a possible solution to the problem of financial inclusion and can be a solution to many challenges, such as money laundering and praedial larceny.
But mobile money also fits in very well with health technology as it can enable the use of, and broaden access to, several health-care services that would not otherwise be available to many persons.
The first thing we have to make clear is that mobile money is not a generic term.
