systems

Important strides have been made in health sectors worldwide to move forward with achieving a complete digital ecosystem with electronic medical records (EMR) central to this.

Jamaicans are highly suspicious of technology, especially those that require the sharing of personal information. I was recently privy to a discussion among doctors and they were of the view that there should be great concern if EMR is implemented in government health facilities as too many people would be able to access individuals' health records.

ANYONE WHO has been sick and has had to take medicines for whatever reason knows that pharmaceuticals can be quite expensive.

The pharmaceutical industry worldwide is a US multibillion dollar one. Each year the Jamaican Government spends in excess of $8 billion to provide pharmaceuticals to public-sector patients through hospitals, health centres and the National Health Fund (NHF).

Hospitals worldwide seek to reduce the length of time patients are admitted as this not only saves the facility resources but it can also be safer for the patient to be treated and released as soon as possible.

Health Technology provides a means of accessing various data that can be leveraged to improve population health and wellness and save resources that would have been used for treatment and care.

Data is powerful and can help with a number of issues if we know how, and are willing to, use it. The digitisation of the healthcare sector will lead to that sector becoming data rich.

It's an established fact — not always given sufficient thought — that a successful nation is not built overnight. It happens brick by brick. And, in the case of the world's leading powers, the process took hundreds of years.

Crucial to nation building is the coming together of people, oneness — a common identity spurred by goals, achievements, and, of course, the survival instinct.

Inevitably from this oneness comes a collective pride, popularly referred to as national pride.

The technology landscape in Jamaica is ripe and ready for harvesting. I have had the pleasure of working with, and interacting with, several youngsters who are geniuses in their own right where technology development is concerned.

After being exposed to these youth, I see no reason why Jamaica cannot be among the best of countries like India, China, Japan and the United States, which continuously push new and emerging technology, and have invested heavily in the development of new and efficient ways of conducting business, and improving efficiency in general.

Several medical practitioners have indicated that they want to introduce electronic medical records (EMR) but they are not looking at the vast opportunities the technology can bring to modernising health care management, or even the much better linkages that EMR could have in digitising other aspects of their operations. 

Generally, we believe in looking at the bigger picture and so when a client approaches us with a need, we demonstrate to them the possibilities beyond that one objective.

Electronic prescribing is much more than it appears. While the basic definition speaks to the technology framework that allows doctors and other prescribers to electronically write and transmit prescriptions to patients and pharmacies, the system as a whole can achieve much more. One general benefit of e-prescription is that it assists with eliminating prescription errors in several ways, but importantly, it can be used as part of a system of medication management.

Douglas Halsall, the CEO of Advanced Integrated Systems Limited, disclosed that Supreme Ventures Limited has chosen his company as the technology partner for its mobile betting app, using its Quisk platform.

The lottery and gaming company confirmed that it had made progress on the project, but said it would await the results of tests that are now under way before going public with the details.

The matter of male fertility is generally taboo in the Jamaican context because we men take our sexual prowess quite seriously.

Yet we have considerably more 'jackets' than many other nations. But this is by no means just a Jamaican issue. According to scientists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, sperm counts among men in the West have more than halved in the past 40 years and are currently falling by an average of 1.4 per cent a year.