Electronic Health Records (EHR) systems adoption in Ghana is remarkable. Going paperless is the new goal of every healthcare provider. The understanding is, once we go paperless, we will have ultimately centralised patient records and achieved one healthcare delivery information process. However, we now know that more existing factors determine the quality of healthcare delivery and our approach to EHR software now means we are just providing a patch for a deep wound that needs much more care to heal.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, Outcome is the way things turn out or a consequence. This should be the first point of thought before any form of software adoption process is started by a healthcare provider. A discovery process that draws out pain points and understands relevant structures to solve this friction should be the first objective method.
Maybe this explains why over a decade of EHR adoption in Ghana, there is still disappointment and little belief that any form of growth can be achieved with software enhancement.
At Firstline.24 we found out some systemic issues:
- Zero customisability – off the shelf solutions which means any growth in the healthcare provider delivery occurs, they cannot adapt effectively with current software tools.
- Poor data architecture means a mediocre data infrastructure that diminishes how important data analysis saves administrative costs, how data dissemination and access can help providers be well informed, quick to save lives, and allow patients to get well faster.
- Non-mobile friendliness means quality time that is to be spent on physician-patient interaction is spent typing extensive encounters leading to clinician burnouts.
- General poor technology framework, means even though a healthcare provider is paperless, they are yet to ever experience any form of improvement in health care quality and introduction of interventions for disease management for both infectious and chronic diseases that are seeing huge epidemiological shifts.
Our suggestive approaches for improving on EHR platforms that serves innately and present outcomes at each turn are;
- Building on a framework of needs, features and benefits that meets the needs of the healthcare provider’s team and their unique community.
- Investing in keen design inputs and output contexts to introduce maximum clinical efficiency, robust data measures, dynamism, customisability and mobile approach that can be scaled for any health care provider irrespective of their objectives and key results.
- Integration solutions such as care, surveillance, learning and administration to allow interdepartmental and directorates to communicate from a single point of view each microsecond.
- Embedding patients into the EHR program, after all they are our true end users. Patient engagement means their access to records, preventive care tools and adherence programs that communicate back to their healthcare providers in one accord.
Our EHR solutions trajectory of travel is long, but Firstline24 team are poised to serve providers who serve the everyday person with the belief that everything is better when services and people come together to deliver the best care possible across the whole continuum empathetically.
We are ready and you are welcomed along to watch or be part of our addiction to serve our first love i.e Healthcare.
Cheers.