integrated

Despite the very commendable effort of the Ministry of Health to reduce waiting time at public hospitals, it is still a major issue. A staff member at my company related to me that she took her grandmother to Kingston Public Hospital from 7 a.m. on a Friday for an assessment and did not leave the facility until 9 p.m.

This poses several problems, one of which obviously has to do with productivity, as an entire day off from work was required to achieve this.

AIS Education Scholarship

Scholarship Requirements

Advanced Integrated Systems will be awarding a scholarship to a needy student for the school year beginning August/September 2019.

The requirements are as follows:

WITH THE direction in which health and technology are going, it would be prudent for the issue of ownership and access to medical records to be worked out once and for all. With pertinent restrictions of course, access to medical records needs to be less prohibitive to the patient.

The number of preventable deaths each year is staggering.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 7.8 million people die of hypertension, 5.4 million die from smoking tobacco, 3.8 million from malnutrition, 3 million from STDs, 2.5 million from overweight and obesity, 2.8 million from poor diet, 2 million from physical inactivity and 1.9 million from alcohol.

Interoperability is what makes an electronic system, well a system. Connectivity is critical in any healthcare environment.

Health technology increases the rate of connectivity and access generally, but within that there also needs to be further connectivity. Interoperability is a fundamental part of this ecosystem.

There are myriad things that we have yet to explore to uncover the benefits of technology in health.

One of them is how we can achieve an interconnected and efficient multiagency disaster and crisis preparation and response mechanism.

Health is integral to any disaster response, and so the first step would be to achieve an interconnected health system. By this I mean a system by which both private- and public-sector health interests can have a symbiotic relationship when it comes to patient care.

Jamaica has long been engaged in strategies to manage population health. From the establishment of the Extended Programme on Immunisation in 1977 to the 1978 Alma Ata declaration which focused on the need to shore up the primary healthcare system.

Efforts have consistently continued along these lines and, admittedly, we have made much progress over the last few decades.

Although we have seen an improvement in general life expectancy, which was 76 years as at 2016, we seem to be going backwards with the increasing incidence of non-communicable diseases.

Earlier this year, I wrote an article about computer vision and how it can positively impact healthcare.

This kind of artificial intelligence (AI) is already a feature of health technology and is used to aid in diagnosis and treatment. AI research in health has been happening for years with spinal stimulation and brain computer interface.

I have had some experience implementing technology in entities that are completely new to it. This is not an easy process and can result in extended delays if not undertaken clinically.

My experiences include implementing health-system-related technology at entities such as pharmacies, hospitals, and medical practices. Like any normal change process, these things require a strategic approach.

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.