Human beings have a fundamental right to health, which must be equally distributed to all. To be able to provide the prevention, care, treatment and rehabilitative services needed for its population, Rwanda has embarked on an ambitious journey to transform its socio-economic situation by changing its economy from an agriculture-based to a knowledge-based economy. In this context, Rwanda has identified the use of science and technology as a key tool for achieving our socio-economic transformation and reaching the MGDs. Although a high tech strategy may appear inappropriate for the health system of a developing country, this is is not applicable to Rwanda because our health sector ICT plan is integrated into two master plans: our health sector strategic plan and our national ICT plan. We know that e-Health is vital in order to create an effective and sustainable health system, as it will help us solve challenges in our health system, such as the lack of infrastructure and the shortage of professionals (since roads are still a problem in some remote areas, sending information, plans, and reports by ICT saves time and money).

Another reason why ICT for E-Health should be developed is because the right to health cannot be separated from the right to information, and the use of new information and communication technologies is the most accurate and timely way to provide information.

A good flow of information concerns four categories in the health sector: the patients, the policy makers, the care providers and the program managers. When it comes to patients, they need to be educated on their health needs and on how, when, and where to seek proper care. Also, once on treatment, patients should know why it is important to go for timely medical follow up appointments and be compliant to treatment, since it not only aids their recovery, but also helps to avoid dangerous resistances to epidemic diseases like HIV. Patients would be informed of these things by making ICT tools available to health professional at all level: community health workers would use phones, while central and district managers, health centres, district hospitals and referral hospitals would use web-based tools. For policy makers and program managers, ICT is important because it helps to design health policies and programs that are informed by evidence and based on accurate information. In general, the use of ICT has proven to be the more effective, secure, rapid and accurate way to serve patients and program managers. This is why the Government of Rwanda has put ICT as a top priority for its health development and recognizes that there is an urgent need to build e-Health capacity.

Many applications of E-health have already been provided. One good example are the web dialogues, which are good entry points for information access and exchanges between professionals and semi professionals who work in remote areas, and therefore have difficult access to journals and books. It is also a tool of sensitization, reflection, idea expression, and innovation. Since it is virtual, it does not require physical infrastructures and costs nothing. Through the exchange of biological and immunological patient information, Xrays, echographies, etc, clinicians can receive ideas, confirm diagnoses and make correct decisions. For example, Harvard’s Global Health website connects Rwandan health professionals to counterparts in other countries, such as the United States, Haiti, and Peru, and allows for free communication between these countries on several levels. ICT also allows for the horizontal exchange of information between policy makers, programs managers, and community workers at the grassroots level. It also allows for vertical exchange between those three categories, thereby breaking barriers to knowledge and communication.  Such information flows create an international family of global health workers and help to bring communities on board with the decisions that concern them. These communication exchanges can take on many different models so countries can choose which one best suits them. As a result, one gains time by quickly building on the experience of peers around the world, and this web-based free information can dramatically improve national and global health.

Without ICT all Rwanda sub programs in the health sector would be unmanageable, since it greatly helps the day to day work of health care providers. For example, the healthcare financing system is web based and manages more than 90% of the Rwandans enrolled in health insurance, along with the performance based program in the 480 health facilities. Rwanda’s ART program, which provides antiretroviral therapy for 70% of people living with AIDS who need them, is also managed via web based technology. ICT also helps to gain data for Rwanda’s localized MDG report, since community health workers and health professionals do active case finding of fever and malnutrition, perform maternal audits, and collect information on all maternal deaths in the country via this technology, in order to better understand why young healthy Rwandan women can be at risk of death during pregnancy or delivery. Also, many other programs in Rwanda have web-based management, such as health surveillance, public health reporting, drug procurement, drug tracking, the blood bank, and E-learning. The big challenge is coordinating ICT tools so that these web based management systems are efficient and have synergy.

All of the above reasons show why the Government of Rwanda has put ICT as a top priority in our health development, as it recognizes the urgent need to build e-Health capacity in order to provide and maintain highly effective, reliable, secure, and innovative information systems to support clinical decisions, patient management, education and research functions within Rwanda’s health sector. This approach will be crucial in enabling the sustainability of an integrated and coordinated healthcare system in Rwanda that will efficiently provide high-quality, gender, geographical and age balanced services.

The last advantage of using an ICT approach is that we save trees since we are saving the paper used for plans, reports, files, mails, etc… At this time when experts recognize the danger of global warming to the Earth, “saving CO2” environmental programs should also award the use of ICT by the Government of Rwanda!

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 4th, 2010 at 8:18 am and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.