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Johannesburg - Imagine this: A patient called Mpume walks into a hospital and places her index finger on a sensor which reads it.
Instantly her record is accessed; the medical practitioners know as she walks through their room doors that last time she was in a medical facility – a district hospital in another province – she had a pregnancy test and a TB test.
Her results show on her electronic medical file; anything that emerges from this consultation will be added to that file, stored on the cloud.
The next time Mpume seeks medical care, in a few months’ time, she will see someone at a non-governmental organisation (NGO) that provides health services to the company her husband works for, in yet another province – and the NGO will be able to instantly access all her records, doctors’ notes and test results via the same system.
Sounds like a dreamworld? It’s not, according to Dr Jan Pienaar, chief medical officer at Anglo American, it’s happening already, in six of South Africa’s nine provinces.
The ‘Health Source’ is a specially developed health record system which enables real-time and, importantly, confidential tracking of patients’ health information.
As patients utilise the healthcare facilities connected to this system, they are creating “a comprehensive, up-to-date record,” he explained to delegates at African Innovator magazine Round Tables Healthcare Innovation Summit, in Johannesburg on 19 August.
The Health Source demonstrates the infinite possibilities in technology for healthcare: It is possible to track patient movements (records show that patients in the public sector can visit up to 10 different clinics, meaning a lot of duplication of records).
This also means seamless continuity of care – something that has been an issue in a sub-region where people move around a lot in search of labour and other reasons. It is already reaching across at least one border – into Maputo.
And it is scalable – this kind of technology can be rolled out and used on a much larger stage than it is being used on currently.
In a few years, Dr Pienaar suggests, it should be possible for the Minister of Health to have instant access to real-time information on patient populations across the country.
