Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia is set to launch a new digital health initiative, E-Health, on Wednesday, October 16, 2024.
Under the Akufo-Addo administration, and with strong backing from Vice President Bawumia, innovative projects like the drone medical delivery service—providing essential medical supplies in real-time to remote areas—and the E-Pharmacy, a digital platform for online medication purchases, have already been introduced.
The upcoming E-Health launch, which Dr. Bawumia has hinted at for some time, will represent a significant transformation in Ghana’s healthcare system by transitioning patient record management from analog to electronic.
This groundbreaking digital solution, the first of its kind in Africa, is being developed by Lightwave e-Health Solutions in collaboration with the Ministry of Health. It aims to create a comprehensive electronic medical record and patient management system, integrating protocols from Ghana’s Disease Surveillance Unit into the platform.
With E-Health, patient records from all teaching, regional, and district hospitals will be digitized, allowing for seamless access to records nationwide. This means that patients transferring between hospitals will no longer need to carry their medical files.
E-Health contributes to the substantial transformation of Ghana’s healthcare system over the past seven years, which includes the allocation of ambulances to every constituency, the drone medical delivery service supplying emergency drugs to over 2,000 hospitals, improved access to medications through the E-Pharmacy, and the expansion of public hospitals.
The introduction of this unique Health Information Management System marks a pivotal moment in Ghana’s healthcare history. Both the government and developers believe it will provide healthcare professionals with real-time access to comprehensive patient records, enhancing decision-making and improving patient safety.
Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, who has been at the forefront of this initiative, is optimistic about its official launch and the positive changes it will bring to Ghana’s healthcare system.
Going forward, medical records and patient histories will be gathered in a single database, accessible by any networked hospital during a patient visit. This digitisation effort has increased efficiency, effectiveness, and productivity in service delivery at our health facilities. This is very, very significant. Ghana will be the first country in Africa to implement this, and globally, only three countries have done it
